Ben Cahlamer
Approaching Nisha Ganatra’s Freakier Friday, one might be forgiven for having a certain amount of apprehension. It has been 23 years since Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna (Lindsay Lohan) swapped lives, and Disney has had its share of misfires as it interplays movies between theatrical distribution and direct to Disney Plus. Ganatra’s steady direction, along with assured acting from both Curtis and Lohan, ensures that Freakier Friday is the real deal, to a point.
Based on Mary Rodgers’ novel with a story from Elyse Hollander and Jordan Weiss (screenplay by Weiss), Freaky Friday finds Anna to be a mother on the verge of getting married while balancing a record producer/promoter executive job and her daughter, Harper’s (Julia Butters), familiar rambunctiousness. Curtis’s Tess has evolved with the times, and, as a psychologist, tries to aid Anna in raising Harper. Even as Anna bats back, she knows the drill.
As if the main returning cast, Mark Harmon included, wasn’t dysfunctional enough, Harper brings out the cat claws for Sophia Hammons’ Lily Davies, an overly entitled brat in her own right. Little do they realize that Lily’s father, Eric (Manny Jacinto, Top Gun: Maverick), is Anna’s soon-to-be husband, with Lily and Harper to become stepsisters, as the same shenanigans that befell Anna and Tess 23 years ago affect all four women, swapping them until they can find their hearts to be honest with each other.
As Ganatra’s film unfolds, most of the apprehension left this critic’s mind. Curtis and Lohan have natural chemistry in their body-swapped performances. Butters and Hammons’ characters and body-swapped performances add a consistency to Freakier Friday that was unexpected and welcomed. The four women in their totality elevate the sequel in a modern way.
The strongest element of Weiss’ (Hulu’s Dollface) script lies in the fact that 23 years have passed for Tess and Anna — their lives have settled into their dysfunctional routines enough that when we catch up with them, a comfortable familiarity and consistency exists between the two films, with no relation to the original Jodie Foster-Barbara Harris film some 49 years later.
After the body swap happens, compliments of Vanessa Bayer’s (Saturday Night Live, I Love That For You) Madame Jen’s fortune-telling abilities, Weiss’s script becomes a bit more frenetic. Okay, a lot more frenetic to the point where situations that happen between Tess, Anna, Lily, and Harper aren’t exactly clear over who was who and what emotion was guiding which character. The body swapping format works for two; bringing in four was just a bit too much, even as Weiss’ script embodies modern traumas affecting people today.
Even with Nisha Ganatra’s consistency, familiarity, and steadiness, Freakier Friday manages to traumatize its audience not out of malice, but rather an overabundance of characterizations and situations. The framework is solid enough, yet the landing feels like a committee couldn’t decide which noodle stuck to the wall the best. Despite the traumatic onslaught of situations that happen on the screen, each of the characters manages to find themselves, with a little help from the marginalized supporting cast. Harmon’s Ryan is present in the story, and Chad Michael Murray’s Jake still fawns over Anna’s personality in Curtis’ body as Weiss and Ganatra awkwardly fold his character back into Anna’s and Tess’ lives.
In saying that Freakier Friday is traumatizing: this is a Disney movie, not a horror film. This is where the audience’s suspension of disbelief comes into play. The emotions expressed by the characters felt a little too real and too close to home, because of the consistency, familiarity, and steadiness with which the director approaches the material. It generates empathy and sympathy for what each of the characters is going through. Generationally, a lack of understanding between adults and their children exists. More importantly, peer-to-peer communication is sorely lacking.
As involved as Jacinto is in the story, Eric is central to drawing Tess, Anna, Lily, and Harper back into reality. Yet, that terra firma doesn’t reach its zenith until late in the third act, and after a great deal of emotional damage has already been done to all five individuals. Eric’s nucleus grounds the combined family and their shenanigans, and Jacinto’s performance is steady enough to bring the audience back into reality.
For their parts, Curtis and Lohan have the same zeal and zest as they delivered in Freaky Friday. The outtakes over the end credits demonstrated the fun the cast had on set. Julia Butters (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Fabelmans) is solid as Harper. For her debut, Sophia Hammons plays erudite quite effectively for such a young actress, even if the character doesn’t display it until later in the film.
Freakier Friday ultimately works based on its lived-in feeling, nearly a quarter-century later. There is a certain level of familiarity that the audience needs to understand where the returning characters are in their lives. Nisha Ganatra’s steady hands are for the fans, while Jordan Weiss’s traumatic freneticism is for the generation who have yet to discover themselves.
