“Freakier Friday” is a fantastic example that sometimes the greatest cinematic special effect is good old-fashioned comedic chemistry. The twenty-year-later sequel to the Millennial classic “Freaky Friday,” itself a remake of a 1976 film of the same name, brings Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan back to movie screens for some classic body switching fun; spearheading a comeback for Lohan after a somewhat tumultuous “post-Disney stardom” media career and offering Curtis an excuse to show why she’s one of the most gifted actors of all time.
The original film holds a special place in the hearts of Millennials, and their parents, as an example of the type of mid-budget family comedy that used to get put in theaters all the time, with a soundtrack that was embedded into the culture’s collective psyche through original songs by fictional band “Pink Slip” and a star cementing performance by Lohan, a particularly gifted child performer who had both the comedic and dramatic chops to hold her own against a seasoned pro like Curtis. “Freaky Friday” was a seminal film in a truly incredible run of escalating success for Lohan, beginning with “The Parent Trap” in 1998 and inarguably crescendoing with “Mean Girls” in 2004. “Freaky Friday” was quietly a fantastic actor’s showcase, with Lohan able to exude maturity well beyond her age, and Curtis gleefully hamming it up as a teenager given unfettered free rein of adulthood for the first time. It’s a lark and a good one at that, the perfect movie to show on long cross-country road trips or at sixth-grade sleepovers. Could a 20-years later sequel possibly be good with the added baggage of needing to propel Lohan out of a tragic, nearly 20-year career tailspin? Is the Walt Disney Company even capable of producing a comedy that offers anything legitimately funny to audiences, as their recent output of atrocious animation remakes and product placement gouging legacy sequels (“Hocus Pocus 2,” “The Haunted Mansion”) might call into question?
As it turns out, they can. “Freakier Friday” is a good time, at its worst when you can feel the studio notes looming Godzilla-like over the film, and at its best when allowing its actors the chance to be silly and make fun of themselves.
“Freakier Friday” belabors a somewhat complicated first act to set up the stakes: Anna (Lohan) is two days way from marrying nice guy British chef (Manny Jacinto of “The Good Place), against the wishes of her surfer daughter, Harper (Julia Butters from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) who just so happens to despise her would be stepfather’s fashion loving daughter Lily, (Sophia Hammons). In the background, Anna’s mother Tess (Curtis) is helicopter-grandmothering while pretending not to be terrified that her family might move to London and leave her behind. The point of all this rigamarole is to do a quadruple switcheroo, having Anna swap with her daughter and Tess swap with her would-be step-granddaughter. After the initial panic of being stuck in the bodies of old people, the daughters quickly hatch a plan to break up their parents, thereby nullifying the wedding, while the old folks in young bodies try to reverse the curse without getting too distracted by the fact that they can now eat as much junk food as they want.
The first 20 minutes of “Freakier Friday” are worrying, a tenuous Jenga tower of plot detailing the various conflicts between Anna and Tess, Anna and Harper, Harper and Lily, and finally Lily and Tess. The writers/studio executives/test screenings clearly couldn’t find a clean fix to this Gordian narrative, opting instead to throw a metric ton of snark, Chappel Roan, and even a gluten-free food fight at the audience to keep the ball in the air. This could have proved catastrophic. Thankfully, the second Curtis and Lohan are playing youngsters in old bodies, the movie regains its pulse and catapults back into the land of the living. Curtis was clearly having a ball making fun of aging 20years ago and is more than eager to tee off on the body horrors of a different young girl being magically forced into a body with even more wrinkles, now with occasional incontinence. All question marks about Lohan’s ability are sidelined almost immediately as she deftly walks the tight rope of silly and sincere in a way that proves the talent she showed as a young performer was not a fluke. It’s nice to have Lindsay back in a way that doesn’t feel like cloying fan service or nostalgia baiting. Rest assured, “Freakier Friday” has its fair share of that, with cameo appearances from more than a few memorable performers from the original film, along with a somewhat more substantial return from “One Tree Hill” star Chad Michael Murray as Anna’s childhood crush, who actually still has the hots for her mom.
“Freakier Friday” feels tailor-made in a lab to give Curtis and Lohan a space to recapture a little of that old, comedic magic, and it certainly seems to have worked. Is “Freakier Friday” groundbreaking or novel? No. Was there a bit of acting from Curtis that made me nearly cry? Yes. Did Lohan’s performance of a “Pink Slip” guitar solo have me vibrating in my seat? Absolutely. I may be cynical, but nostalgia, when done well, can still work wonders. Good on you, Disney. You got me this time.
“Freakier Friday” is, honestly, pretty dang cute, a silly movie with a big heart, much like the original. So, bring your mom or your kid and let yourself get a little misty at some “Pink Slip” jams.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Freakier Friday” is playing at Prytania Uptown, Prytania Theatres at Canal Place and The Broad Theater.
