Lindsay Lohan & Jamie Lee Curtis Return as “Freakier Friday” Expands the Body-Swap Chaos

This summer, Disney will release a sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday, which starred Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis as a mother and daughter whose bodies get switched as a punishment until they learn to love one another selflessly. Much to the first movie’s Millennial fan base’s approval, Freakier Friday, directed by Nisha Ganatra, recast Lohan, Curtis, as well as the movie’s original heartthrob, Jake, played by Chad Michael Murray.

The sequel looks like it’ll be expanding the concept of the grand switcheroo, with Anna (Lohan), Tess (Curtis), and Anna’s daughter and soon-to-be stepdaughter all waking up in one another’s bodies. This multigenerational swap also appears tailored to Gen Z (the palm reader at fault asks for a tip via QR code), but the overall concept is eternal—a family dynamic in need of repair gets worked out when mother and daughter literally step into each other’s shoes.

Regarding that QR code, the concept might stay the same, but the details have vastly changed since the movie’s concept first came out. After all, the Freaky Friday best known and loved by Millennials is already a remake of a 1977 film of the same name, starring Jodie Foster as teenage Annabel and Barbara Harris as her mother, Ellen. With a screenplay written by Mary Rodgers, who penned the original “Freaky Friday” novel in 1972, the mother-daughter trials and tribulations reflect a very different era. Mother and daughter, arguing on Friday the 13th, suddenly switch corporeal forms after simultaneously wishing they could trade places for a day. After landing in her mother’s body, Annabel is forced to contend with the difficulties of being a housewife, including pulling off a 25-person dinner party for her husband—who does nothing—while Ellen, in Annabel’s body, bumbles her way through school activities like field hockey, marching band, and typing class (where she breaks more than one typewriter). Outside of school and home, Annabel, in her mother’s body, bonds with her crush, Boris (Marc McClure), after asking him for help with her pesky younger brother, Ben (Sparky Marcus), and her father’s work dinner. She also learns that Ben, whom she sees as an irritant at best, copies her to try get closer to her.

The 2003 remake keeps the crush and the irritating little brother. Harry (Ryan Malgarini) instigates against Anna, who always gets blamed, but when she shows up for a parent-teacher conference in her mother’s body, Harry’s teacher hands her a letter he wrote, expressing his admiration for his big sister. Anna begins to soften toward her little brother. At the same time, Tess, trapped as Anna, comes around to her daughter’s crush, Jake, after he helps her fill out a standardized test. She also learns that Anna’s English teacher really is out to get her, as Anna claimed, but she can fix it—she recognizes Mr. Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky) from high school, when she rejected him, and calls him out for taking out a decades-long grudge on her daughter. A day in Anna’s shoes also reveals that superficially perfect Stacey Hinkhouse (Julia Gonzalo) really is the mean girl Anna always says she was, and Tess-as-Anna, after a rejected reconciliation, takes her down, too.

Where 2003’s remake departs from the original film is with Tess, also known as Dr. Coleman, a career-minded therapist juggling multiple cell phones and her own imminent second marriage to Ryan (Mark Harmon), a supportive fiancé and emotionally available future stepfather. While Anna’s resentful teenager echoes Annabel’s—adolescent ire doesn’t really change—her interests are updated for a different era, trading aquacade for a rock band and adding details like a keen affinity for bodily piercings. Ellen and Annabel’s switch is an unexplained Friday the 13th phenomenon; Tess and Anna are deliberately swapped by the mother of a proprietress of a local Chinese restaurant who overhears them fighting. But despite the eras’ differences, in both cases, a few days spent as one another imparts a renewed sense of mutual love and appreciation between mother and daughter.

In the 2003 film, Tess and Anna return to their own bodies during Tess’s rehearsal dinner, after Tess releases Anna to join her band for an important audition, and Anna lovingly accepts her mother’s fiancé and their impending marriage. The upcoming remake appears to further work with the challenges faced by blended families, and the actors look set to do a bang-up job, all inhabiting one another, no mean acting feat. Since Freaky Friday came out, Curtis has won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Deirdre in Everything Everywhere All at Once, while Lohan, after rocketing to stardom and enduring the uniquely vicious pressure of early 2000s fame, has had a varied career, opening a nightclub in Athens and beach clubs on Mykonos and Rhodes, meeting with Turkish President Erdogan, and now returning to acting, with Disney as well as several Netflix features.

Lohan followers in particular seem delighted to see the actress back at the helm of a big summer Hollywood movie, which also stars up-and-comers Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons. If the franchise’s fifty-year appeal is any indication, Freakier Friday should be a hit with both the older movie’s fans as well as a new generation. Either way, we’re looking forward to seeing both Lohan and Curtis take on the role of being inhabited by teens.

Featured image: (L-R) Jamie Lee Curtis as Tess Coleman and Lindsay Lohan as Anna Coleman in Disney’s live-action FREAKIER FRIDAY. Photo by Glen Wilson © 2024 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.