Reteaming comedy duos isn’t always a great idea — Bob Hope and Bing Crosby got back together after a decade apart to make The Road to Hong Kong, a dreary capper to their “Road” franchise, one that isn’t high on anyone’s list of favorites. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan have much better luck in that regard, with Freakier Friday giving both actresses the chance to engage in wildly spirited physical comedy while learning (and teaching) requisite Disney life lessons.
In the 22 years since they switched bodies in 2003’s Freaky Friday, Tess (Curtis) and Anna (Lohan) have come a long way: Anna chose to become a single mother to the now-teenaged Harper (Julia Butters, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), a decision that led Anna to abandon her career as a musician. Now she’s a walking ball of stress — the kind of person who’s constantly closing her eyes and trying to center her breathing — while Tess’s grandmotherly support frequently tests their mutual emotional boundaries.
Harper has problems of her own with snotty schoolmate Lily (Sophia Hammons, Up Here), a British expat whose fashion-forward ways clash with Harper’s cutoffs-and-flip-flops surfer aesthetic. When the girls create chaos in the science lab, Anna is called in to the principal’s office for a parent conference, where she meets-cute with Lily’s dad Eric (Manny Jacinto); one montage later, the two are set to marry, even though Harper and Lily still can’t stand each other. But after an encounter with an inept psychic (Vanessa Bayer) at Anna’s bachelorette party, Harper and Anna switch bodies, and so do Lily and Tess, for reasons that discard the wish-fulfillment of earlier installments and make about as much sense. (Curtis’ “I’m old!” bit from the previous movie becomes “She! Has! No! Lips!”)
While Anna and Tess are stuck going to high school — and enjoying being in bodies with functioning knees and digestive tracts that can handle dairy and sugar — Harper and Lily run wild, putting on outrageous fashions from a photo shoot for Anna’s client Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and trying to stop the wedding. Freakier Friday bogs down a bit toward the end, as everyone feels their feelings, and the teenage stepsisters-to-be gain empathy for both their elders and each other, but by that point, director Nisha Ganatra has built up enough goodwill, and delivered enough laughs, that this detour doesn’t become a derailment.
Curtis and Lohan maintain their comic chemistry, and they’re both having a blast conveying, respectively, Lily’s obsession with appearances (cue the bangs and the lip-plumper) and Harper’s sporty awkwardness with the opposite sex (attempting to seduce Anna’s ex, played once again by Chad Michael Murray, Lohan winks and tosses her hair like a woman possessed). And for a young actor portraying being possessed by an older woman, you can’t do better than Butters; as far back as TV’s American Housewife, she seemed to be conveying middle-aged neurosis even when her age was in the single digits. (It’s too bad there isn’t more for the comedically gifted Jacinto to do, but given how underused women are in most male-centric comedies, call it turnabout.)
From Harper’s surfing beach to Ella’s big concert at the Wiltern, Freakier Friday is a very Los Angeles movie, and cinematographer Matthew Clark (who previously worked with Ganatra on Late Night) effectively captures the light and the beauty of Southern California; much of the narrative conflict between Harper and Lily has to do with the possibility that they’ll leave L.A. to move to London, and Clark’s gleaming work bolsters Harper’s case for staying.
Between Lohan’s impressive return to the movies and Curtis’ defiance of the Best Supporting Oscar curse, Freakier Friday represents an all-too-rare opportunity for talented women on both sides of the camera to demonstrate their chops at big-screen comedy. Long may they freak.
Director: Nisha Ganatra
Screenwriters: Jordan Weiss, story by Elyse Hollander and Jordan Weiss; based on the novel by Mary Rodgers
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rosalind Chao, Chad Michael Murray, Mark Harmon
Producers: Kristin Burr, Andrew Gunn, Jamie Lee Curtis
Executive producers: Ann Marie Sanderlin, Mario Iscovich, Nathan Kelly, Lindsay Lohan
Cinematographer: Matthew Clark
Production design: Kay Lee
Editing: Eleanor Infante
Music: Amie Doherty
Sound design: Ai-Ling Lee, re-recording mixer, sound designer, supervising sound editor
Production companies: Walt Disney Studios
In English
111 minutes
