As Hollywood mines its own past for more nostalgia bait, the early 2000s has become ripe for reinvention thanks to Millennials looking at their childhood with rose-tinted spectacles.
Last year’s musical remake of Mean Girls sparked a re-evaluation of Lindsay Lohan, the Disney star whose personal life made her tabloid fodder. Now she has reunited with Jamie Lee Curtis for a sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday. 22 years on from the original body-swap comedy, Freakier Friday finds Tess (Curtis) in a better place with her daughter Anna (Lohan), now an adult single mum to Harper (Julia Butters). Issues arise when she plans to marry Eric (Manny Jacinto), the father of Harper’s high school enemy Lily (Sophia Hammons).
The difficult nuptials become chaotic when the mysterious magic that swapped mother and daughter decades ago swaps the two teens with the adults, with the group racing to reverse the curse before wedding bells chime.
There are sequels that have something new to add, and then there are sequels that are content with just bringing the characters back to see what happens. This is firmly the latter. It’s difficult to know what the point of this movie is other than some surface level gags about social media and aging, but there is some innocent fun along the way.
Much of that comes from the fact that Curtis and Lohan clearly enjoy working together, and have a chemistry that gives the film some heart. Lohan can sometimes look a bit lost, but makes for a solid scene partner alongside Curtis, who throws herself into the laughs as a grandmother possessed by an obnoxious child.
Jordan Weiss’ script has some callbacks from the first film that will be satisfying to devotees, but ultimately Freakier Friday is little more than an excuse to get the band back together (literally in one scene, with the return of the fictional group Pink Slip).
What it lacks in invention it makes up for in spirit, with two leads working hard to make sure fans of the original won’t go home disappointed.
Freakier Friday is in cinemas from 8 August.