Freakier Friday: Written by a Kid Who Switched Bodies with our Film Critic

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C+

The freakiest thing happened today. I’m riding the subway, chilling with my peanut butter-chocolate latte (don’t judge until you try), when this older guy slams into me. He’s got one of those ultra-serious black coffees, no cream, no sugar, just plain old coffee vibes.

We both spill into each other’s drinks, take a sip, and next thing I know — WHAMMO — I’m in his body, and he’s in mine. Suddenly, I have checkered golf shorts and lower back pain, and he’s worrying about whether his latest crop of upper lip hair can be noticed.

Now, this older dude is losing it because he’s this big-shot film critic on his way to a press screening of Freakier Friday, and if he doesn’t get a review in by tonight, his editor will “tear him a new one” (direct quote). And I’m losing it because I got a Fortnite tourney to get to and I’m stuck in the body of someone who says things like “farcical dramedy with uneven tonal proclivities.”

Anyway, he hands me a notebook and a film-lover’s Thesaurus, shoves me into the theatre, and says, “Use the word ‘nuanced.’” So here goes…

Freakier Friday

Hello. This is a nuanced review of Freakier Friday. I am a serious, grown-up film critic who did not use a Thesaurus to write this review.

Freakier Friday is an exceedingly bombastic yet family-enhanced sequel to the original Freaky Friday. This time Disney ups the ante by multiplying the chaos: Instead of two people switching bodies, we now get four, and that means twice the confusion with four times the yelling.

Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Tess, now a grandmother and still somehow the most emotionally anchored character in the film. Lindsay Lohan is back as Anna, now a single mom to Harper (Julia Butters. Funnily enough, I remember her as the precocious kid who acts alongside Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood).

Anna is engaged to Eric (Manny Jacinto), whose sole purpose in the film is to be sweet, kind, charming and good, just like he was as Jason in The Good Place. Eric has a daughter named Lily (Sophia Hammons).

Enters a psychic (Vanessa Bayer) who is neither helpful nor particularly psychic but who accidentally triggers a chain reaction of body roulette. Tess swaps bodies with Lily. Anna swaps bodies with Harper. Harper (now Anna) and Lily (now Tess) despise each other, while Tess (now Lily) and Anna (now Harper) combat over their opposing parenting styles — only now in reverse. Confused? Me too. It’s like playing poker with everyone’s cards showing, and someone keeps yelling “Bingo!”

The laughs mostly rely on acts deemed inappropriate for the body, age, or general situation of each character. And then there are third-party reactions from classmates, schoolteachers, cynical county clerks and good-looking old boyfriends.

I suppose this was hilarious the first time around when my parents were —I mean, when I was —younger, but now that I’m an old guy who can’t hold onto a cup of coffee without spilling it into some poor kid’s peanut-butter-chocolate latte, these feel like jokes pulled so thin that they’re about to snap.

The requisite romantic confusion? Check. The cringeworthy dance scenes? Yep. The unlikely sports scenario? It’s there, as is a ludicrous pickleball tournament has me questioning whether the gummies I found in this guy’s coat pocket were actually from a candy store.

And the script? Let’s just say the film is so sanitized you could eat off the dialogue. The riskiest line involves the word tooting. TOOTING. I mean, come on, Disney. Even my aunt says fart now and she still listens to Neil Diamond. (I’d have said Coldplay, but the film already tosses Coldplay under the bus).

There’s a scene in Eric’s restaurant — intended to be a heartfelt confrontation — where the wrong people say the right things in the wrong bodies and then cry about it. This could’ve been poignant. Instead, it plays like a group project where everyone did someone else’s homework.

To her credit, director Nisha Ganatra keeps the action moving and the screen brightly illuminated. The energy is high and more than a bit silly. Curtis and Lohan look like they’re having fun, even though they occasionally give off the vibe of two people wondering how many more Freaky Fridays they have before their agents stop returning their calls.

Personally, I think Julia Butters is probably the shining thespian light, channelling both teenage apathy and senior fatigue with believable nuance. (Did I use the word correctly? I think I did. It feels right.)

In summary: Freakier Friday is a corny, tepidly enjoyable, thematically recyclable, narratively entangled cinematic situation — sort of like watching four people trying on the same style of sweater in different sizes. And it’s nuanced.

(Also, if anyone knows how to reverse a subway-coffee-based body switch, please DM me. I have gym class tomorrow and this guy’s knees are not up for it.)

Freakier Friday. Directed by Nisha Ganatra. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Manny Jacinto, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons and Vanessa Bayer. In theatres August 8.