It feels like the taste of cinema audiences may be shifting. 2025’s biggest movies so far are Lilo & Stitch, Minecraft and Jurassic World: Rebirth; all shrugged at by critics but offering viewers straightforward entertainment. Better reviewed but darker titles like Thunderbolts* and 28 Years Later have struggled. Perhaps, as the real world seems ever bleaker, escapism is what we all crave. That could be good news for Freakier Friday, a sequel that makes barely a lick of sense but is infectious, ridiculous fun and feels like a trip back to simpler times.
The 2003 original had Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as Anna and Tess, a bickering mother and daughter who undergo a body swap and learn to understand each other. Two decades years later, Tess is a renowned therapist who psychobabbles any conflict into submission. Anna is now a music exec and mum to a rebellious teenager, Harper (Julia Butters). Anna’s also due to marry sweet chef Eric (Manny Jacinto), who has his own teen, Lily (Sophia Hammons), who cannot stand Harper. After the female family members visit a dodgy ‘psychic’ at Anna’s bachelorette party, the teens and adults switch bodies and have to figure out their differences in order to swap back.
The whole gang is just a good hang, and that feels like enough
In many ways, this also feels like a movie from 2003. Its understanding of both teens and the over-sixties feels highly outdated. In the bodies of older people, the teenagers dress like Hannah Montana-does-Project Runway and seem largely oblivious to the modern world. When Harper has to guide her mother’s pop star client through a content shoot, this Gen Alpha leads her through a dress-up montage akin to a cut scene from 13 Going On 30. And in the body of sixtysomething Tess, Lily assumes older age is all pickleball, adult nappies and troublesome knees. The plot never disabuses her of this notion or gives us a peek at Tess’s successful career. There is little that’s knowing or self-aware about this movie.
However, as much as it’s all daft and awkwardly assembled, with scenes often jumbling into each other without clear flow, it’s also incredibly easy to like. Jamie Lee Curtis is having such a wildly good time that it’s almost impossible not to go with her. And it’s heartwarming to see Lohan again showing the light comedic charm that once positioned her as Hollywood’s next big leading lady. Butters, who was so preternaturally brilliant, aged nine, in Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood, might herself be on her way to A-list status. She gives a pretty impressive, subtle, Lohan impression here. The whole gang is just a good hang, and that feels like enough.
There are almost endless holes you could pick in its logic and storytelling, but it gives you few reasons to want to. This Friday’s freakier, but it’s kind of… funner too.
In cinemas worldwide Fri Aug 8.