2003 was a pretty pivotal year for me. I was 8 years old and dealt with the passing of a family member, and the welcoming of one too (albeit, more animalistic than human). But, 2003 was also the release year of Freaky Friday, starring Jamie Lee Curtis as Tess Coleman, and Lindsay Lohan as Anna Coleman. Anna was an absolute vibe at that time, and she’s probably what inspired my punk-rock look still to this day.
Now it’s 2025, I’m 30, I’ve got a life of my own, and if you told 8-year-old Missy that they would see the sequel, they would be screaming with excitement. But does Freakier Friday instil that same excitement? Not as much, but rather than a scream, there’s a loud woo instead. As Freakier Friday turns up the dial, instead of only Anna and Tess body swapping, they instead swap with Harper Coleman (Julia Butters), the daughter and granddaughter of Anna and Tess, as well as Lily Davies (Sophia Hammons), the soon-to-be stepdaughter and step-sister to Anna and Harper. Freakier Friday isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it does make it an enjoyable time.
Freakier Friday begins with audiences meeting Tess and Anna again, getting reacquainted with them to understand what’s happened in the past 22 years. Tess is still an author and a therapist, but we now learn that she’s a podcaster and a grandma, too. Anna, meanwhile, isn’t a rock star like she wanted to be, instead working in the industry as a music producer, but she’s also a single mum. We don’t learn about what happened to her ex (sadly, it’s not Chad Michael Murray’s character, but he does show up as the owner of a record store with a bit more recent history with Anna and Tess that goes slightly unexplored). It’s assumed that Anna most likely got a divorce, a word that Disney often avoids (it’s why Anna’s father is dead in the 2003 version).
Meanwhile, Anna’s daughter Harper is obsessed with surfing and has a more laid-back attitude and is closer to her grandmother than her mum. Anna isn’t exactly like her mother, taking on a more gentle parenting approach, whereas Tess’s role as a grandmother is becoming a bit overbearing for Anna. While it does seem that both Tess and Anna have learnt from their past, and are better understanding one another, there is still some work to go.
From here, we follow Harper, who is paired up with Lily in science class. Instead of focusing on school work, Lily would rather focus on designing clothes. Because of this, the science experiment goes awry, and now their parents need to come in. This is where the meet-cute begins, as Anna bumps into Lily’s father, Eric (Manny Jacinto), and there’s an instant attraction. We get a montage of photos, notes, and dates in planners, showcasing how they fell in love and got engaged.
This is where Freakier Friday follows the same notes as Freaky Friday. Both pairs get their fortunes told at Anna’s hen’s night, and from there the body swap commences and only a few days before the wedding! There are some neat nods to the original, like when it strikes midnight on Friday, each character changes the way they sleep to mirror their body swap partner, similar to Anna and Tess in the first film. There’s also Lily’s constant comments about Tess’s appearance once the swap has happened, even Lily and Harper slamming into each other, with Tess and Anna stating that they already tried that.
Because Lily and Harper now have the bodies of adults, they can do whatever they want. Chaos and misunderstandings a plenty, if they’re your favourite tropes. As the pair decide to break their parents up in ways that will bite them in the behind. The film itself does a decent job of keeping things modern, as one of the things that Disney, or really any writer over the age of 50, can never understand is teen culture. Things move pretty fast with the youth, due to the fact that you’re only a teen for seven years. By the time a movie is made, the lingo used is already dead and gone. Like, in Black Panther (2018), T’Challa’s sister Shuri yells at T’Challa, “What are those?”, a meme from Vine that was already dead and gone by the time the film released (to give Black Panther credit, it was set in 2016).
But when it comes to youth culture and Freakier Friday, it fits quite well. One of the areas it did a great job is how the body swap occurs. In the 2003 film, Tess (in the body of Anna) realises how the body swap happened, noting that it was “Asian voodoo” by Pei-Pei (Rosalind Chao), the owner of a Chinese restaurant, and her mother (Lucille Soong). This is an area that director Nisha Ganatra wanted to update, with Jacinto agreeing and mentioning his concerns around the portrayal of Asian characters.
There are even a few jokes here and there about the way older people use slang to try and appeal to the youths, with it ending up cringy and more like Steve Buscemi pretending to be a teenager than ‘cool’ or ‘hip’. Though noticing at the start, Harper has a sign on her door that says it was a safe space, and honestly… I was ready to see a weird activist caricature, but alas, no caricature was detected. There were mentions of Harper being an environmentalist, but it just wasn’t to the same scale compared to Lisa Simpson.
The music used within Freakier Friday works, while it does deviate from the pop-punk/rock variety, it still works in a lot of areas. Too bad we don’t get Simple Plan’s cover of Happy Together by The Turtles. Instead, we get some Chappell Roan, and a re-recording of Take Me Away by Chrstina Vidal Mitchell, which is a cover by the Australian all-female alt/punk-rock band, Lash (who incidentally broke up roughly by 2003). Because music is important to both films, Lohan picked up the guitar again, with one particular song being a plot point from a misunderstanding. Honestly, Lohan’s short musical career was highly underrated. “Confessions Of A Broken Heart (Daughter To Father)” still tears me up inside twenty years later.
What is impressive is how Curtis and Hammons embodied each other, but also Lohan and Butters. It genuinely felt like they really did body swap while filming. It’s clear that everyone had a great time, and both Curtis and Lohan look insanely good. As a fan of the 2003 movie, the sequel feels right at home.
Freakier Friday is in cinemas on August 7th.
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Checkpoint Gaming attended a screening of Freakier Friday as a guest of Disney ANZ.
About the Author
Missy Taylor
they/them
Missy is a disabled writer on Boon wurrung land, who is obsessed with Garrus Vakarian and Captain America. You can find them talking about the art of Drag and eating Korean and Japanese food.
