Freakier Friday, from the pov of a 37 y.o. (the same age as Lohan’s character)
An unhinged post which shouldn’t have made it out of drafts, with spoilers
Note: don’t let me overhype this for you. Go see it before you read this. Don’t make me say I told you so.
I was planning to watch Freaky Friday this week anyway, when I found out Freakier Friday was playing at our local. I’m slowly collecting all the films of my youth on DVD to play to my kids. I don’t have that many yet, so the Lohan/Curtis 2003 classic comes around on the rotation about once a month. I ended up watching the old movie on Tuesday and the sequel at a Thursday matinee with my mum. We happen to be the same age as the characters/actresses in the film.
What a gorgeous night. It wasn’t the best movie, but neither was a single one of the glorious films I loved in my 90s and early 00s childhood, and that was part of their charm. Just show me a good time, a bedroom set with a crochet blanket and postered walls, some credits styled like a scrapbook, a teen protagonist with a normal amount of body fat, a lot of warmth, and a girly rock pop tune played live at the end of the movie at a wedding by said protagonist, with a mix of long shots and super tight close ups of her guitar playing and I’m SOLD. Of course, I’ll also need an androgynous love interest with curtains and the female protagonist to be struggling to contain her boobs under an XL men’s t-shirt, possibly even using tape, so my subconscious mind can know what this film really is: made by queer people.
Freakier Friday did not disappoint. Firstly, the film opened with a Chappell Roan banger which I knew all the words to—great start, and I feel like Chappell is peak 90s revival, like if the Spice Girls had a grandchild. We go full circle on the excellent soundtrack, meeting MUNA who play the backing band to a famous singer in the final scene, which sees Anna and her band back on stage to play ‘Take Me Away’, which I also knew all the lyrics to…
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are movie stars of the classic era and it was a blast from the past to see two people that good on screen together. Both own the key to that kind of stardom—to play natural but in a way that makes your natural human character seem bigger than every other natural human on screen, and has the audience rapt on your every move, pausing and rewinding just to hear the way you said something or see your facial expression again.
Julia Butters as Harper and Sophia Hammons as Lily did a really good job as ‘switched’ Anna (mom aka Lohan’s original character) and Tess (grams aka Curtis’ character), with Hammons (an American) pulling off a flawless English accent. I’d say Lohan and Curtis had more fun, and as a result were funnier, in their switched roles, but Butters and Hammons did a better job in convincing as the two older characters.
I really enjoy being mocked, so I loved how the sequel sent up millennials the way the 2003 adaptation of the 1972 novel sent up Boomers in their parenting prime. My favourite thing about the film was my favourite thing about Barbie (and btw I enjoyed Freakier MUCH more than Barbie; think it did a way better job of taking something beloved but old school and updating it) ~ it knew, and contained plenty of Easter Eggs for, its audience.
I was, of course, judging it largely by this benchmark—how much it catered to fans of the original. Below are some extremely scruffy, unedited notes—with many spoilers—on various ways in which the movie was and wasn’t accurate to 2003 vibes (note: I use the word ‘vibes’ because I’m communicating with you in 2025; ‘vibes’ used in this way only appeared in common usage in the U.K. about 15 years after the movie. In 2003, if someone had said ‘vibes’ to me, I would have assumed, confidently and without question, that they were referring to something like a rampant rabbit).
2003 vibes accuracy-ometer
Loved how the WHOLE of the 2003 cast returned, including Anna’s band mates and brother, and they didn’t replace eg Chad Michael Murray with eg Charlie Hunnam, not say anything about it and act like audiences haven’t noticed (although that would have been more accurate to the era, and so maybe they should have as part of the joke).
Was it a purposeful nod to 90’s and early 00’s cinema that Anna is 37 and daughter Harper is clearly at minimum 15? Around the millennium, all TV and Film Mums had their babies just before they graduated university and also became lawyers and worked for a couple of years before they took maternity leave. No one watching did more than quietly notice and accept this hopeful nod to having it all (it all being three teenage children at 40 and a long successful career that was also a distant memory that you often, for a funny reason, had to return to and kick ass at).
Crazy things are just slotted in there, like a mime at the school, with no explanation—reminded me of Kirsten Dunst-helmed teen movie Get Over It (2001).
Also, re the huge food fight scene at school in which the mime featured ~ erm, what’s this?? Crowd scenes??? It’s like we’re in a 00’s Time Machine! (Substack’s capitalisation)
The actress who plays Harper looked a bit like season one Buffy, and it made me miss 16mm because everyone looks cooler on film.
Old flame Jake running a record store was Fever Pitch/Empire Records classic. Suggest this for sequel to original movie adaptation of 2025 2000-set novel Deep Cuts, in which will they won’t they couple have split up yet again, but eventually get back together when she (famous but broken) walks back into his (dirt poor but warm) life.
Elaine Hendrix, of The Parent Trap fame, made a guest appearance, and it was a beautiful thing to see, if totally bizarre and shoved in and tiny.
Anna and Tess in Harper and Lily’s bodies stuffing fries and commenting they haven’t eaten carbs or sugar since Reagan, and hey look, there’s an onion ring in the burger. It feels modern, to have an onion ring in the burger. There didn’t used to be anything in there but lettuce, a slice of tomato, and some cheese. Also, everybody in every 90s anything eats burgers and fries and candy floss.
Lily’s character wants to be a fashion designer. This itself (aiming at an amazing job, and not thinking about doing something sensible you can half arse and then not think about after 5pm) is very 2003…
…but also the 2003 film’s clothes were so the basis for Gen Z fashion, and it’s fun that Lily’s designs do sort of reflect and resemble some of Anna’s original clothes.
The British. We’re sexy and not to be trusted but ultimately charming, and both 2003 and the sequel know it.
The wedding photo credits… so Freaky Friday and Parent Trap and The Sweetest Thing and any film where anybody got married 1995-2003.
The bit after the wedding photo credits with Curtis’ character Tess’ lip plumped-photo was so cute and I laughed hard, and I literally thought, ‘the original movie must be 2003 then’ — and yes, upon googling it, it was a solid gold 2003 move.
I loved how the film opens with Lohan shredding in her bedroom and dreaming she’s onstage… it’s so true that, when we’re older, some things totally remain the same. I would have loved to see a (more realistic) storyline where she wasn’t working in music at all, but in a ‘normie’ job, or maybe as a music teacher, and where the ending of her being on stage was a small stage in a local indie venue—maybe Jake’s record store! But, maybe that wouldn’t have been very 2003… where the ‘ultimate’ was obviously to fall in love and become a pop star.
And I loved that the fortune teller was a multi-hyphenate, aka someone who back in 2003 would have had one job, but now has about 18 including a shift at Starbucks. Accurate to 2025.
Ways the film could have been more accurate to the time shift
While the age diff between Anna and Harper felt authentic 00s, solo momming started gaining traction only a few years ago. Also, it would be more typical of a millennial woman to enter her 30s before considering it (I absolutely love that that’s not the case for Gen Z). I feel like Harper (the daughter) should have been very 5. Not very 15… which she was.
I missed the original Chinese setting of the curse, although even at the time it felt a bit strange and I kept wondering if it was racist to be enjoying it. I will say this — Chinese restaurants are part of the rich cultural heritage of America (and the U.K.) and they were more abundant back in 2003 (because of the age of a lot of people who opened and ran them ~ my Cantonese family who ran cha chaan tengs and take aways have mostly retired) and I missed this setting (which also featured in early seasons of Bones, circa 2005-6) and would have liked to see the same characters return (which they did) but portrayed more realistically. Like rather than avoid the original premise, resulting in fewer Asian people employed by the movie, have a do over but good…
The take down of the millennial feminist girlboss era (eg Anna’s platform high heels, pink suit, career as a music studio executive) was nascent but appreciated. Still, I would have enjoyed more “get back to your roots”ness, with Anna then explaining, perhaps to Harper or to her old flame Jake, that she was also anti the corporatisation of music, but could no longer financially afford to be so publicly.
One small but beautiful thing about Lohan’s teen oeuvre (to be clear, I’m referring to the many years Lohan played teens onscreen during her teens and 20s) was that it came during a time when Hollywood (or someone there) had just become a little bit more convinced that films with young women protagonists with (ever so mildly) curvier bodies could bank box office. Think Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries. I’m certain Lohan was also chosen to lead Freaky Friday due to her historical role as the twins in The Parent Trap but I think it was also because she was a ‘relatable’ protagonist. Argue with me if you think I’m wrong, but I wish the casting of the teenagers in Freakier had reflected this past oeuvre of body-positive filmmaking (even if it was only body posi because execs had learnt they could make more money that way). While they didn’t look unhealthy, with obesity at a 22% prevalence in the 12-19 year old age bracket in the USA, what are the odds that both daughters of this couple would be super slim? Also, both Jamie and Lindsay are curvy—wouldn’t it make more sense for Harper to have been played by a curvy actor? Couldn’t that have added to the mad queer joy of this movie?
The scenes moved very quickly from one to the other, which was super modern, like flicking through TikTok on a smart phone. It wasn’t terrible but my mind wasn’t programmed that way and I did think it made the movie lighter—with no time within scenes to get into much depth.
The plot was not as well thought through as the 2003 film ~ say what you want about millennium era filmmaking, but there was always one central storyline that followed a three act structure and cinematic narrative arc so darn closely that it could not help but make sense… there were various weird moments in the sequel like where the characters said stuff like “I’m no longer sure about this huge important thing… because of this small bizarre reason” and you just had to shrug it off and enjoy the next Tiktok-like scene, which you probably would because everybody was dressed fabulously and Curtis would be doing something beautifully unselfconscious and funny.
Lastly, and mostly… Lohan’s character should’ve been sapphic. I mean come on, she’s a millennial in 2025. We’re all doing it. Get with the program. This is my inspo for my alt storyline…
Alt storyline
Imagine this: Anna’s about to finally get married to Jake, but why has she been putting it off all these years? Because subconsciously she knows all the things she loves—girly rock, Chappell Roan, crochet, Mystery Date, The Craft, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, her pink suit, her band’s name, writing lyrics, and daydreaming—are so GAY. Jake doesn’t get it, and he never will, and he’s nice and all, but he never wants to go anywhere, won’t get a dog, and his lowkey mild misery vibe coercively controls their lives. He keeps saying things like “I’m old, I don’t want to.” Anna has lived with Jake for 20 years while growing into her own, and she ultimately realises maybe for her heteronormativity is a phase, not a fact of life. However, it takes her queer daughter Harper to realise it for her. Because Harper has trauma bonded with her moody dad, she and Anna don’t get on. They go for Chinese food to try to talk it out. Pei Pei’s mother hears them arguing and, with her dying breath, wishes that Pei Pei would slip them fortune cookies, ‘one last time’. When bodies get switched, Harper discovers that, while she’s always known she’s queer, maybe her mom was 90’s-repressed into not realising her collection of Spice Girls memorabilia (and her baby Leo but never grown up Leo obsession) was sapphic as all hell.
In conclusion, I absolutely agree with Time critic Stephanie Zacharek who wrote, “appears to exist largely for one reason: to grift off the fondness many adults have for the original, even though the sequel has none of that picture’s breezy, observant charm”, but the grifting worked for me and I had a fun time watching it.
Further imbibing…
Oh my god, I’ve just read online that there’s a 1995 film version with Gaby Hoffman (and Shelley Long aka Dede Pritchett on Modern Family). SIGN ME UP. Or, help me buy the DVD by subscribing below 👇