“More is more” is the guiding ethos of this busy, goofy and occasionally moving comedy sequel from the Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis and the former teen star Lindsay Lohan. The pair are reprising their roles, and indeed recycling much of the plot, from 2003’s mother-daughter body swap classic Freaky Friday, but with one key difference: there’s more of everything. More narrative convolutions, more subplots, more supporting characters, more one-liners, more slapstick, more musical interludes, and even more tear-jerking finales.

The body-swapping splits four ways. Former grungy rebel turned protective single mother and talent manager Anna (Lohan) magically trades places (a mystic is involved) with her resentful daughter Harper (Julia Butters) while Harper’s high school nemesis and posh British blow-in Lily (Sophia Hammons), under the same transformative spell, swaps with Harper’s grandmother, and Anna’s mother, Tess (Curtis).

Anna is only days away from marrying Lily’s father, Eric (Manny Jacinto), who hopes to move the clan to London, but not before Anna can quell the anxieties of her superstar client Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and hopefully discover an outlet for her musical ambitions.

Complicating matters even more is the newly hatched plan of Harper and Lily, while in the bodies of Anna and Tess, to break up the nuptials, scupper the London exodus and reintroduce Anna to hunky love interest from the first Freaky, Jake (Chad Michael Murray). And that’s not even addressing the screwball character confusion that permeates Anna and Eric’s rehearsal dinner, their surf and dance lessons and Eric’s citizenship interview with US immigration services.

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There is, to repeat, a lot going on here. But one of the delights of Jordan Weiss’s hugely ambitious screenplay is that everything, somehow, makes loose sense. The other delight is the witheringly funny one-liner, delivered by Lily, when she first discovers Facebook. “Look,” she says, “it’s a database of old people!”

Elsewhere, Curtis and Lohan excel at “being” teens together, complete with exaggerated mannerisms and cartoonish facial expressions. They certainly seem, in places, to be channelling the Laurel and Hardy classic Brats, or maybe Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke as Kevin and Perry.

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The Saturday Night Live star Vanessa Bayer is fabulous as the ditzy clairvoyant Madame Jen. The director Nisha Ganatra (Late Night) is also generous to her cameo players and transforms the ostensibly minor scene of Eric’s citizenship interview into a showcase for Santina Muha, playing a government agent with a penchant for Chumbawamba.

In the end, I missed the storytelling honesty and the mother-daughter dynamics of the original. But only just.
★★★★☆
PG, 111min

In cinemas from Aug 8

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