In her nearly 50-year career, Jamie Lee Curtis says she’s only improvised one single line: “Make good choices.” These are the words her character, Dr. Tess Coleman, yelled out the car window to her daughter Anna (Lindsay Lohan) in the 2003 body-swap comedy Freaky Friday. That beloved, heavily-memed quote is brought back for the new sequel, Freakier Friday, which reunites Curtis and Lohan. Only now, things are a little different: Anna is the one shouting “Make good choices!” and consequently mortifying her own teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters). Tess sits behind the wheel, rolling her eyes. “You are so lame,” she tells her.
It’s a humorous twist for anyone who’s seen the first film, but it hits harder for millennials who grew up with Lohan onscreen. Twenty-two years after the original Freaky Friday’s debut, the long-awaited sequel we thought might never get made is here — and against all odds, it’s actually kind of great. Freakier Friday, directed by Nisha Ganatra, is a charming love letter to Lohan and her generation, and marks the actress’ official comeback. So get in, loser. We’re going to the Lohanaissance.
First things first: Anna is far from lame. She’s not even a regular mom — she’s a cool mom. She abandoned her rock-star dreams and her band, Pink Slip, to raise Harper on her own, though she still writes songs privately. She’s also the manager of emerging pop star Ella (played by Never Have I Ever star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), who’s grappling with a very public breakup. Anna is constantly putting out fires, particularly when she gets called in to Harper’s high school to discuss her daughter’s fight with her British nemesis, Lily (Sophia Hammons). It’s there that she meets Lily’s dad, Eric (the excellent Manny Jacinto, who goes full Swayze with a Dirty Dancing scene). It’s love at first sight, much to the chagrin of their rival daughters.
Six months in, Anna and Eric are engaged, and deciding whether to stay in California or move their families to England. A consultation with a kooky psychic (who later reveals she’s actually a Starbucks barista) played by Vanessa Bayer brings on the body switch. Only it’s not just two bodies switching: It’s four, with Anna and Harper swapping while Tess and Lily pair off. Quadruple body-swapping is ambitious, and we’ll admit we had low expectations, but each actress pulls it off (Hammons as Tess, diving into ice cream: “I haven’t had dairy since Bush was president!”). Butters in particular kills it, going from surfer chick to worrying mom clutching a glass of crisp white wine, frantically trying to save her engagement while stuck inside the body of a teenager. (As with Sydney Sweeney, Margaret Qualley, Mikey Madison, and others, Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood helped kick off Butters’ career. What the hell was in the water on that set?)
We veer into Parent Trap territory as Harper and Lily, now inside the bodies of Lohan and Curtis, respectively, conspire to break off their parents’ engagement. But Ganatra takes things a step further with a Meredith Blake cameo, as Elaine Hendrix plays a Rolling Stone editor at Ella’s photoshoot; we can neither confirm nor deny that Rolling Stone asks musicians to dress up as strawberry shortcakes. It wouldn’t have been shocking to see other Parent Trap Easter eggs: Hendrix sipping an Evian water bottle, Chessy entering with a plate of chocolate chip pancakes, and where on earth is tie-dye girl? Lohan has been playing along with all the nostalgia, though she swears the Oct. 3 wedding date for Anna and Eric, a.k.a. Mean Girls Day, was an accident. Sure, Jan.
Meanwhile, pre-switch, Curtis is “Gram,” the heartwarming kind who bakes cookies for her granddaughter at 4 a.m. and takes too long deciding when it’s turn at a four-way stop. She’s still a therapist, and despite crowd-surfing at her last talk-show interview, she’s continued to write successful books. If some of the jokes in this film don’t work, rest easy knowing none of them are Curtis cracks. After her intense dramatic role in The Bear, it’s refreshing to see her in a lighter, funnier role; she totally owns scenes involving the donning of lip plumper for passport photos, or accidentally winning a pickleball match against Grace and Frankie’s June Diane Raphael.
Curtis’ best scene, though, is when she (as Lily) and Lohan (as Harper) visit Jake, played by Chad Michael Murray, reprising his role. He’s moved on from his barista days and is now the owner of a record store, the classic hot-guy career trajectory. He’s clutching a stack of Pink Slip records for Anna to sign for charity, but Harper makes a complete fool of herself in a variety of ways that aren’t even a little bit funny. Meanwhile, Tess is hiding behind records, writhing on the ground, directing Anna with sexy cues. When Jake finally spots Tess/Lily in between the aisles, he starts to pine for her and their “Baby One More Time” days. It’s all a little High Fidelity — did Jake listen to music because he was miserable, or was he miserable because he listened to music?
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Other characters return, including Mark Harmon as Ryan (who has about two lines), and Anna’s brother, Harry (Ryan Malgarini, who has even fewer). Pei-Pei and her mom (Rosalind Chao and Lucille Soong, respectively), the Chinese restaurant owners who caused the 2003 body swap, make a cameo at Anna’s bachelorette party. Sadly, Harold Gould, who played the earthquake-fearing grandpa in the original, died in 2010, and Willie Garson, who played Tess’ neurotic patient Evan, died in 2021. But at least we get some scenes with our favorite substitute teacher, Elton Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky), who is once again running detention, this time forcing his Gen Z students to pick up trash off the ground.
And thank god for Pink Slip. Anna reunites with her old bandmates (Christina Vidal and Haley Hudson) onstage at the Wiltern, and they perform “Baby,” her tender ode to Harper. Then they dial it up for a scorching “Take Me Away,” and it’s euphoric to see Lohan shredding the guitar after all these years. It’s a feel-good Disney moment in a film full of them, complete with fashion montages, wacky science lab experiments, and food fights. And Lohan is dynamite as Anna, whether she’s rocking her blazer around Capitol Records, riding around in Jake’s red Camaro, or surfing in a badass Blue Crush scene. She’s returning at exactly the right time, when millennials are nostalgic for their youth, and younger generations are bringing back shoulder bags and low-rise jeans. That’s not to say the film doesn’t make fun of millennials — there are some hilarious jabs, like how Facebook is “a database of old people” and Coldplay and John Mayer suck. But if you feel like catching up with the Colemans and revisiting some early-aughts magic, Freakier Friday is a good choice.
From Rolling Stone US
