‘Freakier Friday’ Review: Nisha Ganatra’s Body Swap Riot
‘Freakier Friday’ is Disney’s best theatrical live-action release in ages, thanks in no small parts to the ineffable charm of both Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
It’s been a while since Disney made something worthwhile in the live-action department – ignoring the direct-to-Disney+ movies nobody watched (there were plenty of good ones over there). Theatrically, the landscape has been more grim than ever, with listless remakes and visually drab blockbusters taking control of what was once a prime destination for enthralling family entertainment.
Even worse, the mid-budget films Disney churned out between its big event titles were now relegated to streaming instead of being theatrically released. If it weren’t for the studio reassessing its priorities, we might have gotten Freakier Friday, the much-anticipated sequel to the 2003 readaptation of Mary Rodgers’ Freaky Friday, on Disney+, instead of giving it the theatrical window it deserves. Thankfully, we live in a timeline where Freakier Friday got a release on the big screen, and one of the most recognizable figures of the late 1990s-early 2000s era of family entertainment, Lindsay Lohan, gets the comeback opportunity she rightfully deserves.
After wrapping up her three-picture deal on Netflix (I only saw Falling for Christmas, which was pure camp, in the best possible way), the next logical step in Lohan’s resurgence would be to star in a title fit for the big screen, to remind us exactly where she belongs. And what better vehicle for this reminiscence than a legacy sequel of one of her most popular movies, still rewatched (and admired) over twenty years after its release. With Nisha Ganatra in the director’s chair (who previously helmed the incredible Late Night and The High Note), the expectation that Freakier Friday would disappoint felt nonexistent, even if Disney has had relatively low standards as of late.
And while it doesn’t reach the highs of Mark Waters’ now-classic reimagination of one of Disney’s most acclaimed live-action offerings, which propelled Jodie Foster to newfound levels of stardom before eventually winning an Oscar, Freakier Friday still entertains highly and is the best live-action Disney theatrical release in ages. Of course, this being a known Disney title, Ganatra and writer Jordan Weiss know that they will eventually have to capitalize on the nostalgia of the 2003 film, while carving a new adventure for mother/daughter duo Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) to be stuck in.
This time, the two swap bodies with Anna’s daughter, Harper (Julia Butters), and Lily Davies (Sophia Hammons), daughter of Anna’s fiancé, Eric (Manny Jacinto). Harper and Lily haven’t been on the best of terms ever since she arrived in Los Angeles, and their relationship has worsened after Anna chose to tie the knot with Eric. The two don’t seem to be getting along at all, so much so that, after a visit from a spirit medium at Anna’s bachelorette party, their spirit inhabit both Anna and Tess’ bodies, while the adults now are in the bodies of the respective children.
Of course, the joys of watching a body swap movie are seeing how actors can play their counterparts well. Acting is, after all, playing, and no sub-genre of film expresses it better than the body swap movie. If you don’t believe me, watch John Woo’s Face/Off. As soon as John Travolta begins to act like Nicolas Cage (and vice-versa), you immediately buy into it, as preposterous and nonsensical as the plot is, that any “plot hole” seriously doesn’t matter. The same can be said for Freaky Friday (which was shot by the same cinematographer who worked on Face/Off, if you can believe it). You buy entirely into Lindsay Lohan embodying Jamie Lee Curtis, and vice versa, especially in the audition scene, where the two help each other out and begin to repair their fractured relationship.
The framing device in Freakier Friday is the same, though, this time around, the body swap gets doubled. Anna and Tess, through Harper and Lily’s bodies, attempt to find clues on how they can break the curse brought upon them by the spirit medium, while Harper and Lily, in adult bodies, attempt to sabotage Anna’s wedding with Eric. This begins with an attempt to rekindle an old relationship with Anna’s ex-boyfriend, Jake (Chad Michael Murray), and try to fail the immigration interview required for Anna and Eric to move as a newlywed couple.
One can see where this thing is going a mile away. Still, there was something so cathartic about seeing Lindsay Lohan on the big screen, having the time of her life, that any “flaw” in Freakier Friday quickly started to dissipate, especially in how Ganatra retains the core relationship of the 2003 film and expands upon it in wildly imaginative and uproarious ways. Lohan, who has successfully come out of a dark and harrowing period in her life, completely illuminates the screen as she gets to play the inner kid in herself that has always been there in each of her best performances. It’s the closest we get to her star-making portrayal in Nancy Meyers’ The Parent Trap, a movie that has a reasonably deep familial connection with me, which is why I felt an overwhelming sense of emotion when a figure from that movie showed up and reunited with Lohan on screen as if no time had passed.
Was it egregious key jangling? Sure, but there’s a real sense of support for Lohan in that scene, almost as if the cameo is rooting for her success within the film, and beyond the screen. There’s a deeper meaning behind this appearance, not just for fans of The Parent Trap, but for the 1990s kids who grew up watching several Disney movies that have now become ingrained in our popular culture thanks to the ineffable, down-to-earth sense of charm Lohan brought to each of her portrayals.
It’s even better when she’s paired with Curtis, who is also allowed to let her inner child run wild on a broader scale than the first, though with more ageist jokes this time around. The initial ones work because they recall the first movie. Unfortunately, the succession of punchlines targeting geriatric audience members doesn’t, especially during an extended Walgreens sequence, where the entire thing feels like a commercial instead of the comedy we wanted to see (just like another Walgreens sequence in a terrible Disney legacy sequel, Hocus Pocus 2).
But it’s the only scene in the film not worthy of the standards Ganatra establishes from the start, reminding us of an era of comedy we regularly had on the big screen, until studios began to relegate them to streaming. There’s something so contagious about laughter that it becomes hard to resist what’s in front of us, especially when it’s treated with so much reverence and earnestness. Even better, there’s an achingly melancholic throughline one can parse when Ganatra begins to sit with both Lohan and Curtis, who begin to ask themselves what this life means as they have grown older in the past twenty-two years, since the release of the first film. When Anna eventually recreates the song “Take Me Away,” a massive hit at the time, the significance feels different.
It isn’t just Lohan rehashing one of her most well-known scenes (which, in the first film, was shot with real poetry by Oliver Wood, who incorporates some of the techniques he developed with John Woo in Face/Off), because the meaning of the song in Freakier Friday feels different. It’s almost as if Lohan has the opportunity to thank every audience member who has been by her side, as she’s now back to the place she belongs. It’s almost as if she never left it in the first place. When that realization hits you, holding back tears becomes difficult, as schmaltzy as Freakier Friday may get. It also helps that both Butters and Hammons are excellent and deftly capture the mannerisms of both Lohan and Curtis, making this legacy sequel less of a cynical affair than most of the requels Hollywood likes to hash out with little to no effort.
Ganatra’s direction notably stuns in its climax, where Freakier Friday gets to a surprisingly moving crescendo before neatly wrapping things up with the same conclusion as the 2003 film. Sometimes, unabashedly ripping off a movie doesn’t work and feels cheap. But for the grand return of Lindsay Lohan on the big screen, it’s more than enough, especially as one reminisces about their youthful time watching The Parent Trap, or the readaptation of Freaky Friday, when they were children, as they now pass their admiration of one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars to a newer generation. Here’s hoping we will see Lohan back in a film worthy of her status, in theatres, much sooner than later.