{"id":45854,"date":"2025-08-05T17:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/45854\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:46:07","slug":"jamie-lee-curtis-and-lindsay-lohan-reunite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/45854\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan Reunite"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe prolific Hollywood subgenre of the body-swap comedy had already been around a while when Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a> and Lindsay Lohan<\/a> teamed up for the surprise hit, Freaky Friday<\/a>. Heaven Can Wait, All of Me, Big and the Blake Edwards guilty pleasure, Switch \u2014 yeah, it\u2019s bad, but Ellen Barkin and JoBeth Williams can do no wrong \u2014 are just a few. There was also, among others, a 1976 version of Freaky Friday whose lackluster script and broad direction were somewhat redeemed by the irresistible pairing of Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Mark Waters\u2019 2003 remake raised the bar, with zesty dialogue (courtesy of writers Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon), energetic physical comedy and well-matched leads with strong chemistry. It remains easily the best screen adaptation of Mary Rodgers\u2019 1972 kid-lit classic. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFreakier Friday\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tDoes this make \u2018Freakiest Friday\u2019 inevitable?<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, Aug. 8
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rosalind Chao, Chad Michael Murray, Mark Harmon
Director: Nisha Ganatra
Screenwriter: Jordan Weiss; story by Elyse Hollander and Weiss, based on Mary Rodgers\u2019 book Freaky Friday
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated PG,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 51 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tSadly, there\u2019s nothing even remotely as funny in the new follow-up, Freakier Friday<\/a>, as Lohan\u2019s high school grunge rocker Anna Coleman waking up in the body of Curtis as her control-freak psychotherapist mother Tess and screaming in horror at the mirror: \u201cI\u2019m like the crypt-keeper!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tArriving 22 years and countless other body-swap comedies after its predecessor, Nisha Ganatra\u2019s \u201cfreakquel\u201d (blame Disney<\/a> for that one, not me) swaps the earlier film\u2019s buoyancy and charm for manufactured chaos that\u2019s far more strained and aggressive. In fact, your mileage with this one might depend on your tolerance for Curtis dialing up the wacky meter to maximum volume in a performance so manic and screechy she makes Donna, her recurring character on The Bear<\/a>, seem demure.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe intergenerational sparring and mother-daughter friction that fueled the laughs in Freaky Friday are diluted in a script by Jordan Weiss (Hulu\u2019s Dollface<\/a>) that sticks to much of the earlier template but doubles the body-swap shenanigans. That spreads the awkward hilarity of the scenario too thin, to the point where you start to forget who\u2019s who. Or stop caring.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust as the 2003 film exploded from the conflict of rebellious teenage Anna\u2019s resentment that Tess was planning to replace her late husband by marrying Ryan (Mark Harmon), the sequel spins around the threat of another major disruption to the family dynamic.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis time it\u2019s single mother Anna, whose wedding to widowed Brit restaurateur Eric (Manny Jacinto<\/a>) is looming after a whirlwind six-month courtship. Anna\u2019s surly 15-year-old daughter Harper (Julia Butters<\/a>) is vehemently opposed to the possibility of being uprooted and moved to London. Eric\u2019s daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons), also 15, is hostile to the idea of staying on in Los Angeles rather than getting back to England to enroll in fashion school. Naturally, the two teens hate each other, leading to a school bake-sale food fight that\u2019s pure Disney Channel.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Rosalind Chao and Lucille Soong are among the returning Freaky Friday cast, their characters have little to do, but at least the filmmakers wisely dispense with the \u201cAsian voodoo\u201d fortune-cookie factor.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, first Anna and Tess and then Harper and Lily land at the table of bargain-basement psychic Madame Jen (Vanessa Bayer, working hard for little dividend), who surprises even herself by intuiting that the older Colemans\u2019 lifelines have intersected before. Without knowing where the mantra even comes from, Madame Jen tells the teens: \u201cChange the hearts you know are wrong, to reach the place where you belong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyone who saw the first go-round will know what a rumbling earthquake felt only by the four ladies portends. At midnight, Anna and Tess find themselves in the bodies of Harper and Lily, respectively, and vice versa. Panic and confusion ensue, along with a major wrench in the marriage plans, as they get to experience each other\u2019s lives through different eyes, eventually discovering empathy and common ground that previously were elusive.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne issue here is that grown-up Anna and middle-aged Tess are a lot less fun than their younger counterparts, no matter who\u2019s inhabiting their bodies. There\u2019s some pleasure in seeing Lohan return to one of her most beloved roles (alongside Mean Girls and The Parent Trap). But making Anna a music-biz manager trying to keep her heartbroken client Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) from a meltdown on the eve of a big concert at the Wiltern is just a laborious way of wedging Anna\u2019s former band, Pink Slip, into a splashy concert climax.<\/p>\n

\n\tGanatra and Weiss make everything feel a bit mechanical rather than an escalating spiral of craziness, and too many scenes play like montage fodder without actually taking the plot anywhere. That includes Anna getting to experience Harper\u2019s love of surfing; Tess taking a borrowed sports car for a reckless spin around L.A.; Lily stepping in for Tess in a vicious pickleball match; or Harper having to improvise in an immigration office interview to ascertain the legitimacy of Anna and Eric\u2019s marriage plans.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat last scene yields some cringe-inducing comedy as the immigration officer (Santina Muha), fresh from a breakup, gets weepy over Chumbawamba\u2019s \u201cTubthumping.\u201d And yes, \u201cpissing the night away\u201d is a phrase that might come to mind while watching this.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe nadir is Ella\u2019s photoshoot for a Rolling Stone feature \u2014 exactly what kind of pop star gets photographed dressed as a giant strawberry or a birthday cake? Oh right, Katy Perry \u2014 that gets hijacked by Anna\/Harper and Tess\/Lily when they raid the wardrobe racks for new looks more in keeping with their new inner selves.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comedy seems even thinner when it starts depending on hideously ugly fashions for laughs \u2014 Lily, girl, if your taste runs to that denim monstrosity, good luck getting into fashion school. But never fear, costumer Natalie O\u2019Brien later puts Curtis into a garish pink ruched dress that almost makes the previous outfit forgivable.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie is possibly loud and colorful and zany and kooky and busy enough to mask the desperation in a script that shows little imagination for the psychological hurdles of people from three different generations struggling to understand one another.<\/p>\n

\n\tPartly because they\u2019re not revisiting roles from decades ago but forging their own characters, Butters (the pint-size Method actress on the Western set in Tarantino\u2019s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/a>, now all grown up) and Hammons are appealing. Both squeeze some juice out of the incongruity of teenagers suddenly thrust into adult responsibilities.<\/p>\n

\n\tJacinto also brings easygoing warmth and a dash of poignancy to his role as the poster-boy fianc\u00e9. But if Harmon\u2019s Ryan seemed a bit wan in Freaky Friday, here he\u2019s so evanescent you forget he exists.<\/p>\n

\n\tDisney is hardly new to the business of calculated nostalgia, but the way this film shoehorns in Chad Michael Murray<\/a>\u2019s character, Jake \u2014 despite it making zero plot sense to pull Anna\u2019s former high school flame back into the story \u2014 seems particularly shameless. His main function is to rediscover his former burning passion for Tess in scenes that made me turn away in embarrassment.<\/p>\n

\n\tNaturally, someone\u2019s going to say something platitudinous like \u201cFamily is everything\u201d by the end, when all those differences that keep the characters at loggerheads melt away and a melding of the two families at last seems doable. But I think I would have preferred a shot-for-shot remake to this painfully stretched cash-grab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prolific Hollywood subgenre of the body-swap comedy had already been around a while when Jamie Lee Curtis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,39747,437,134,25056,32233,17353,39748,17354,39749,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-45854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-chad-michael-murray","11":"tag-disney","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-freakier-friday","14":"tag-freaky-friday","15":"tag-jamie-lee-curtis","16":"tag-julia-butters","17":"tag-lindsay-lohan","18":"tag-manny-jacinto","19":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}