I’m a Gen Z film critic and Freakier Friday has one glaring problem

This decades-late sequel has one glaring problem

Hollywood hit the jackpot the moment Lindsay Lohan walked into her first audition. After all, how many actors could have delivered Mean Girls, Life Size and Freaky Friday within just a few years?

I’ll admit, I was barely out of nappies during her early noughties heyday. However, once the 2010s arrived, I wholeheartedly jumped on the Lohan bandwagon, with Freaky Friday practically consuming my existence.

The body-swapping storyline was pure comedic brilliance to me – I watched it repeatedly until Jamie Lee Curtis’s shriek of “Look at me. I’m old! I’m like the Crypt keeper!” became burned into my memory.

So, it’s no surprise that I was absolutely delighted about its follow-up, Freakier Friday, finally hitting the big screen.

Set in the same vaguely supernatural world as the first instalment, the sequel follows Anna (Lohan) and her therapist mother Tess (Curtis), as they adjust to Anna’s new life as a single mother to teenager Harper (Julia Butters).

Problems arise when Anna falls for Eric, a single father she meets at Harper’s school, played by Manny Jacinto. While their romance is picture-perfect, Harper and Eric’s child, Lily (Sophia Hammons), can’t seem to get along. And when Eric and Anna decide to tie the knot, the teenagers can’t stand the thought of merging their families.

Just like in Freaky Friday, the body-swapping magic swoops in right on cue to force these characters into each other’s shoes.

Early critical reviews may have you thinking this is the first noughties sequel that truly lives up to its original. And I hate to burst your bubble, but that ‘certified fresh’ 77% Rotten Tomatoes score is far from the truth.

Freakier Friday thrives because of nostalgia. That’s all. Strip away our attachment to the wacky original and this decades late comedy is just fine for home streaming.

The first Disney remake was charming but it didn’t have a ground-breaking script – and we didn’t need it to. If a new variation of Freaky Friday had landed in cinemas in 2005, or even 2010, we may have collectively rolled our eyes but we would’ve still given it a chance.

But in 2025, when endless body-swapping stories have been firing out for decades, you’d hope Freakier Friday would take a fresh approach to the all-too-familiar story. Instead, new director Nisha Ganatra and writing duo Jordan Weiss and Elyse Hollander give us the exact same story.

It’s almost enjoyable at first; you feel like you are in on the joke and that makes every scene hilarious. But the 45-minute mark quickly rolls around and you realise that yes, the soundtrack is great and the film is vibrant and Curtis is a force, but this is the same comedy that premiered two decades ago.

It’s reminiscent of letting your friend copy your homework and begging them to change a few words. Only in this case, the writers sprinkle in two more characters to complicate the now overdone body-swapping plotline.

While the new characters add an extra layer to the story, they are not placed in the spotlight. Because this is, after all, a Lohan and Curtis film. So, we still spend most of the runtime with Lohan and Curtis, just as in the original.

Even the running joke is the same: parents and grandparents are oh so old but teenagers are enviably youthful.

Don’t get me wrong, these actresses are captivating together. It’s clear that they enjoyed filming this long-awaited sequel, but their collective talent is not enough to breathe new life into its overfamiliar script.

The central dilemma revolves around Anna and Eric deciding whether to move to London, and effectively uproot the Colemans’ lives in America. It’s a fascinating plot point, which lends itself to some heartfelt scenes between Curtis and Hammons.

It’s also a missed opportunity because setting the story in London may have revived the entire narrative. Rather than just grappling with the “horrors” of old age, it would have been more engaging to watch these characters navigating culture shock. Even bringing the boys into the body-swapping chaos would have created a more interesting dynamic.

But, alas, Disney stuck with the tried-and-tested script that worked like a charm the first time around. Unfortunately, their tricks don’t land the same 22 years later.

Though, it has to be said, Chad Michael Murray’s helmet hair is still a sight to behold.

Freakier Friday is in cinemas now.