Freakier Friday picks up 22 years after the original movie. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, it also has too much plot going on with its abundance of characters to justify its existence. Still, it’s not without its goofy charms.
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan return as Tess and Anna Coleman, with Lohan’s Anna now a single mother of a daughter, Harper (Julia Butters), and now Anna is getting remarried to her new fiancé (Manny Jacinto). This doesn’t sit well with Harper or his daughter Lily (Sophie Hammons).
Lily and Harper already don’t get along, but during Anna’s bachelorette party, the four ladies have separate palm readings that sense the uneasiness in their relationships, followed by an earthquake that only the four of them feel, and, you guessed it, all of them are magically switched.
Anna and Tess are now Harper and Lily, and this, of course, adds a whole new series of shenanigans to the story. Their interactions work for a few minutes before the story goes into overload with plot threads dealing with proper immigration as the fiancée is from England and even bringing back Anna’s former boyfriend Jake (Chad Michael Murray).
It’s not surprising that we’re getting a sequel to Freaky Friday 22 years after the original. What is surprising is that the cast and filmmakers were able to infuse so many new ingredients. The downside is they don’t come off cohesively.
Curtis and Lohan make their comedic scenes work. Still, anything involving the two step-siblings seems to exist to push the story ahead until the film reaches its predictable conclusion.
Freakier Friday is a jolly, well-acted sequel that fans of the original are looking for: a fantasy comedy with a happy ending and a few funny moments thrown in.
