Originally published to FOX5 Vegas on Aug. 6, 2025.

The Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis edition of Freaky Friday is 22 years old on Wednesday. The perfect age for a sequel, as we all know. Just in time, Freakier Friday is ready to dredge up those feelings of early-aughts nostalgia.

Lohan and Curtis return as Anna and Tess Coleman, now decades older, alongside a cavalcade of familiar faces from the 2003 original. New to the chaos are Julia Butters as Anna’s daughter Harper, Manny Jacinto as Anna’s love interest Eric Davies, and Sophia Hammons as Lily Davies, Eric’s daughter — and Harper’s rival. Sound complicated? It is.

And that’s one of the film’s core issues. Rather than the classic two-person body swap, Freakier Friday opts for a four-person free-for-all. The result? A confusing tangle of swapped identities that’s hard to track, even when familiar actors are on screen. Sure, Lohan is in the frame, but who is she playing at any given moment? 

Ostensibly a comedy, Freakier Friday takes broad swings at humor. Slapstick dominates, but most gags fall flat. When it comes to character-based laughs, the film stumbles hardest. The audience simply doesn’t know these new characters well enough to find their missteps funny. We’re told Harper loves to surf and Lily is British, but they’re never established beyond basic traits.

Worse, the film misses what made the 2003 version memorable: sharp contrast and mutual send-up. Back then, Lohan’s teen found her mother’s life exhausting and unglamorous; Curtis’ middle-aged character was thrown into the emotional minefield of adolescence. Both got a dose of humility. Here, the dynamic is lopsided. Tess, played by Curtis, becomes the film’s punching bag. She’s mocked for her wrinkles, crackly knees, and even incontinence, while the younger characters, including Lohan’s now-grown Anna, escape largely unscathed. There’s little tension, little reversal, and no real bite.

It feels as though Freakier Friday is hesitant to poke fun at Gen Z stereotypes, or even hint at them, out of fear of alienating its younger viewers. Early on, it teases a critique of safe spaces and trigger warnings, but those threads vanish before becoming jokes.

These uneven choices culminate in a movie without a clear identity. A legacy sequel to a 2003 remake of a 1976 adaptation of a 1972 book, Freakier Friday feels like it was made by no one, for no one. Die-hard fans of the 2003 version will find enough nostalgia to warm their hearts. But for everyone else, a casual living room viewing will suffice for what amounts to a Disney Channel original wearing theatrical clothes that it never quite grows into.