Freakier Friday

With “Everything, Everywhere….” (2022) and “The Last Showgirl” (2024) recently under her belt, you just know that Jamie Lee Curtis is going to give her part in this everything she’s got, and she has great fun as the grandmother “Tess” in their quite imaginative rehash of the original from twenty-odd years ago. This time, the body swapping has not just seen her and daughter “Anna” (Lindsay Lohan) change places, but her own daughter “Harper” (Julia Butters) and her best friend “Lily” (Sophia Hammons) who just happens to be the daughter of “Eric” (Manny Jacinto) to whom “Anna” is shortly to be married. Now the four of them have to find some way of getting back into their own bodies before “Ryan” (Mark Harmon) has his increasingly eccentric girlfriend “Tess” put in sleeveless jacket whilst “Anna” has to convince her own daughter that her new marriage plans won’t affect their relationship. The men in this film are pretty hopeless. Harmon is as wooden as one of the chopsticks that could be used in the new restaurant of “Eric”, who doesn’t look old enough to have a teenage daughter and sports some sort of faux British accent that attempts to legitimise the plot’s grand scheme to relocate his new family to London. Butters and Hammons don’t really have so much to do and are adequate, but the thrust of the comedy and the writing is manna from heaven for a Lohan and Curtis who are clearly enjoying this daft romp down memory lane. It uses the three generations (and their gaps) entertainingly pinging fashion, music, sexist and ageist attitudes as it goes, whilst shamelessly ogling the out-of-his-depth record store owner “Jake” (Chad Michael Murray) whose sexy arrival reminded me of one of those old Nick Kamen 501 ads. It does run out of steam a bit towards the end as it succumbs to a little too much yucky sentiment, but JLC crawling along the floor doing her “stretching” and Lohan showing us how definitely not to flirt are a good laugh. They do say that youth is wasted on the young!

This is what happens when you let AI write a script. It feels like Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan sat down and prompted AI to write a piece with some bullet points they wanted to do in a movie and just went with what came out. The onscreen performance of the two seemed like they had a bunch of fun on set, but it's not strong enough to carry the whole movie. The cameo appearances are nice but the forced product placements are off-putting. I went into the start of the movie with low expectations and finished without those expectations being met. I'll watch the "original" with JLC and LL over and over, but this was a one and done.