Review of Freakier Friday, directed by Nisha Ganatra

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

When I was in graduate school, one of the many things I looked forward to was using my AMC A List. For my non-American friends out there: AMC is a local national chain in the USA, and they have a subscription where for a flat fee per month you can see four movies a week. I had a more flexible work and class schedule back then, so when I wouldn’t have class or work in the morning, I often saw movies when they had the 10 AM or 1 PM showings then headed home or to class.

It was when a teenager totaled my car that I had to give up my AMC A List, and I stayed off of it for about a year. Well, recently, I renewed my A List, got a new job that had decent pay and benefits, and bought a new car, so the world was my oyster when it came to the kinds of movies I could now see at my local movie theater chains.

I ended up seeing Freakier Friday recently because my entire family wanted to go. My sisters and I were familiar with the original movie, and I had grown up watching these kinds of movies in general. My mom and niece had no idea what this movie was about, which was fine, as I feel like you could enjoy it somewhat without the knowledge of the previous film still.

Let’s get into the review portion of this post! I don’t want to keep going on and on in the introduction, as I know it’s not what people are here for.

Years after the events of the original Freaky Friday, Anna, Tess, Anna’s daughter Harper, and her stepdaughter-to-be Lily all swap bodies yet again.

This movie takes place decades after the events of the original Freaky Friday, where Anna Coleman is now a single mother to her daughter, Harper, and Tess helps her out with raising her granddaughter. Anna works now as a music producer at Capital Records, and despite her own busy schedule, she still tries to wake up her daughter every morning and take her to school.

On this particular morning Harper sneaks out to go surfing, but comes home just in time to be driven to school by Anna and Tess. It’s in the car we learn of her new rivalry with British student Lily, and that same day they get into a fight in their chemistry class and cause a chemical reaction that’s pretty bad. No one gets hurt, but Anna is summoned to the school and meets Lily’s father Eric in the meeting.

There, they fall in love, and the movie jumps forward to them planning their wedding after six months. Lily and Harper are still fighting viciously, much to their parents’ chagrin, and there’s a fight happening between Harper and her mother because she doesn’t want to move to London after the marriage. She’d rather live with Tess, but Lily, who is thrilled at the idea of going home, clashes with Harper more.

When they cause a massive food fight at a bake sale, their entire class is in detention and their parents learn what happened. Anna forces them to come to her bachelorette party. Anna and Tess run into Madame Jen, a psychic who warns them about their history of swapping bodies. She gives the teenagers a prophecy, and an earthquake occurs that only the four of them notice. That night, while they’re sleeping, everyone switches bodies.

Anna ends up Harper, Tess ends up in Lily, Lily in Tess, and Harper in Anna. Harper and Tess, in the older women’s bodies, don’t know how to act as adults, and Harper especially doesn’t know how to act around Eric as his fiancee. Anna and Tess go to school and detention, then sneak off after the supervising teacher falls asleep on the bleachers.

Lily and Harper plot to end their parents’ marriage in the meantime, and after Anna’s client Ella (who has her own romance issues and spends most of the movie dramatically crying) mentions that Anna wrote a song about a boy, they track down her old boyfriend Jake from high school. Harper tries to flirt with him at his shop, but he thinks she’s having a seizure instead and tries to be friendly to Lily (who is in Tess’ body).

They take Jake’s car, despite Lily not knowing how to drive, and go to Eric’s immigration interview. Harper tries to ask him harsh but slightly dumb questions in front of the officer to prove why they shouldn’t get married, but he answers all of them so sincerely she realizes he’s deeply in love with her mother. The immigration officer approves their marriage and application because she, too, sees the love.

Lily still wants this to be called off, even though Harper becomes more disillusioned with the plan when Eric reveals he was teaching her mother how to surf for her.Next up is the engagement party, and Eric’s parents fly in from the Philippines. It’s at his famous restaurant too in Los Angeles, but when Lily, in Tess’ body, causes a scene by inviting Jake and saying that she doesn’t approve of the wedding in front of everyone, Eric gets upset and finally calls the wedding off.

Everyone ends up upset by this, including Lily. Harper and Anna head to Ella’s concert, as she was constantly texting Anna’s cellphone, and there they discover the band Pink Slip, which Anna had been a part of, is there to help perform the song she wrote. Harper and Anna end up performing it together on stage.

After talking with Tess, Lily confronts the reality of her situation and talks to her father, as she realizes she is ruining his happiness. They drag Eric to the concert, where they watch Anna and Harper perform. All the women end up back in their original bodies again after the performance, and Anna, in her own body, asks Eric if he will marry her. He agrees, then ends up accidentally crowdsurfing up to the stage as Pink Slip and Ella start performing again.

Lily and Harper have a moment together where they call each other sisters and each other’s home. The film ends with the wedding and the family deciding to stay in Los Angeles.

Overall Thoughts

I thought this was a really fun movie with strong messages/themes throughout that mirror the original, even though a solid chunk of the jokes didn’t land with me. A lot of people in my theater (which was almost entirely full) were cackling at some of the jokes and gags, so I just think my sense of humor didn’t align with the vision of this movie.

That said, this isn’t as good as the original, but it’s really solid as a standalone film. I mentioned earlier that you could go into this completely blind and still have a great time. My mother and niece enjoyed it despite not knowing anything about the previous movie (my mother even turned to me when it ended and asked if Lindsay Lohan was a Disney star), but I will admit certain details and characters you’ll miss or won’t recognize if you go this route.

It was fairly predictable, but I expected that going into this. I was surprised by the strength of the acting by the teenagers and of Eric’s actor, who was charming despite having such a flat/static character. We get more of him in the end and how he wants to protect Lily, but before that he plays the archetype of the super nice perfect fiance that she’d be dumb not to marry.

This was a great time for a Saturday afternoon outing, as the matinee tickets are more affordable at AMC, and I say check it out if you’re interested in seeing the movie. You might not need to see it in theaters and could have a girls’ night at home when it hits streaming, but give it a chance if you’re interested!

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