Freakier Friday
Cinemark Buckland Hills 18 XD and IMAX
Manchester
Aug. 12, 2025
It’s been a scorcher in Connecticut for the last few days, so what better way to escape than with a giant, ice-cold soda in an ice-cold theater, watching Freakier Friday to learn lessons about family warm enough to thaw any ice-cold heart?
Freakier Friday picks up two decades after the original, Freaky Friday (2003), where a mother and daughter (Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Logan, respectively) switch bodies and gain a better understanding of the other. Anna Coleman (Lohan) is no longer just a daughter, but a mother herself to precocious teenager Harper (Julia Butters). Tess Coleman (Curtis) has been promoted to grandmother, and is trying to help Anna navigate the blending of their family with Anna’s fiancé, Eric Reyes (Manny Jacinto) and his arrogant heiress Lily (Sophia Hammons). The daughters despise each other, and are equally upset that their parent’s nuptials means that one of them will have to move — either the Colemans to England, or the Reyeses to Los Angeles.
As the title suggests, the same Freaky Friday shenanigans ensue, but this time it’s a double dose as Harper switches places with her mom Anna, and Lily swaps with grandma Tess. With their newfound powers as adults, the daughters set out to destroy the wedding.
The film overall has the feeling of a high-budget Disney Channel movie, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the pedigree of Lohan and the fact that Disney produced and distributed the film. Still, the film benefits from the familiarity of certain filming and editing techniques that any child of the ’90s and 2000s will instantly recognize. This isn’t a movie that’s going to yell at you about the difficulties of family; instead, it eases the audience into its message. And that’s a good decision.
The film primarily focuses on the women, and the ensemble cast works well together. Lohan still possesses the charm that made her a worldwide phenomenon as a kid, and she’s believable both as a “safe space” mom and a rebellious teenager who resents those efforts. Both Bitters and Hammons are deliciously insufferable as spoiled rotten teenagers at each other’s throats, although they do struggle a little to pull off their older counterparts after the body swap.
But the real star is Curtis. As Tess Coleman, she’s a well-meaning ball of energy that effortlessly switches between mantra-chanting therapist and busybody grandma who can’t help but get in the way. As Lily, Curtis shows the full range of her abilities, embodying youthful vigor and silliness as if she were a teenager herself. She both manages to produce the most laughs and anchor the dramatic moments of the film.
At first, I wasn’t sure that the world needed a sequel to Freaky Friday, until I realized that my son wasn’t alive when the first film was released. There’s an entirely new generation of children who think that their parents are braindead zombies who live to make their lives embarrassing and miserable. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth — all we want is to get along with our kids and have fun. They’re the ones who make that difficult, not us! (Might be setting myself up for my own Freaky Friday with that line.)
Seriously though, watching the first Freaky Friday as a teenager did give me insight into what it’s like to be an adult. I was still too young to properly contextualize much of what I was seeing, but now that my son is about the same age I was upon watching it, I wish that I could be so eloquent as to try and describe why I do what I do.
No amount of heartfelt conversations will ever make our kids realize that, though, or make us as adults understand what kids today have to deal with. So that’s what stories are for. Maybe someone else has the right combination of words and images, or the right perspective, or the right joke to help us understand each other.
So if for no other reason than that, Freakier Friday is an essential piece of viewing for families, so that we can hear someone else tell us that the people we sometimes resent are just trying their best.
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Jamil goes to check out a good old-fashioned block party.
