The most disastrous decision made by The Walt Disney Company during the height of the Covid crisis was to send several of its films, all intended for theatrical releases, directly to the streaming platform. Even if this was a concession made to reap the barest of financial benefits when the theatrical market’s revitalization was ambiguous, it instinctively taught a significant portion of audiences that they could expect to see Disney films at home. The results proved disastrous in the years that followed, in which the studio attempted to return to its prior release model. As it turns out, families that had gotten used to seeing Pixar and Marvel films in their living rooms weren’t willing to trek out to see them in uncomfortable, understaffed, and overpriced movie theaters.
Disney’s strategic response to this crisis hasn’t just been to extend the window of theatrical exclusivity for its Marvel and Pixar releases, but to send several titles planned for streaming to the big screen. Most notably, last year’s Moana 2 was conceived and nearly completed as a multi-part streaming series before CEO Bob Iger ordered animators re-edit it into a theatrical feature. While the result was an incoherent, sloppy 100-minute feature, it still netted Disney well over $1 billion. The takeaway was that any film with even the smallest of fanbases could be a potential blockbuster, even if it was a much-delayed legacy sequel to Freaky Friday.
2003’s Freaky Friday, which was itself a remake of a 1976 film that starred Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris, came at the tail-end of a renaissance of high school comedies that had begun in the late-1990s. When compared to prior entries in the subgenre, such as 10 Things I Hate About You and Clueless, Freaky Friday was the “Disney-fied” version of a fish-out-of-water story. Nonetheless, the “body swap” premise has only ever required two performers who can convincingly act against type within humorous situations. In 2003, Jamie Lee Curtis was in the midst of a transition from bombshell roles to being cast as “moms;” Lindsey Lohan, before all the subsequent scandals, was considered a promising young actress with comedic potential.
The reason that most comedy sequels end up being significant disappointments is that they’re almost uniformly based on the premise of “well, it happened again.” It's hard to not be entirely derivative of the first film’s jokes, and it was clear that a Disney-produced Freaky Friday sequel wasn’t going to take the experimental risks made by comedy sequels like Wayne’s World 2 or Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Instead of being another work of commentary on the comparative star status of its two leads, Freakier Friday is packed with more characters for a set up that’s significantly more confusing.
In the years since the original Freaky Friday, the adult Anna Coleman (Lohan) has already married and divorced, and has raised a teenage daughter of her own, Harper (Julia Butters). Anna’s insistence that she’s a competent, modern woman who can raise her child independently has sparked the interest of her mother, Tess (Curtis), who’s taken it upon herself to be an active part of her granddaughter’s life. However, Harper’s biggest concern is that her mother is about to wed the widowed father Eric Reyes (Manny Jacinto), whose daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) is less than enthused about her new stepsister. After another case of body-swapping sparked by the fortune teller Madame Jen (Vanessa Bayer), all four women are forced into each other’s bodies; Anna and Tess have swapped bodies with Harper and Lily, respectively.
With a doubled set of characters, Freakier Friday has less time to live within the new reality of a body swap. The charm of 2003’s Freaky Friday was that a mother and daughter had to spend time seeing how the other one lived. In Freakier Friday, the rush to reverse the curse takes precedence over these moments of insight. It’s also complicated by the classical trope of “kids that try to prevent their parents’ marriages,” which has been done better in Disney films like The Parent Trap. Since Lily and Harper fear that their respective parents aren’t fit for one another, and don’t like the idea of having to become stepsisters, they use the fantasy shenanigans as an excuse to call off the impending wedding.
What’s most effective about Freakier Friday is the storyline that’s most derivative of its predecessor. Although Curtis’ performance adds little other than noise and jokes at the expense of the elderly, there’s a spark between Anna and Harper, another mother-daughter duo exasperated with one another. Even if Anna grew to understand her own mother as a result of the events in the original Freaky Friday, she has felt less in-touch with Harper because of the pressures of raising her as a single parent. Harper’s projected anger towards her mother stemmed from her fears that an expanded family could compromise the purity of their relationship as a mother and daughter.
The rare moments in which Freakier Friday is allowed to be vulnerable give both Lohan and Butters the opportunity to elevate the material. Butters, 16, has collaborated with Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Bay, and is destined for more promising ventures than a long-gestating Disney sequel; Lohan hasn’t done much recently outside of her interchangeable roles in various Netflix rom-coms. As much as Disney’s current output is predicated on nostalgia, a clean break from decades-old projects might’ve been a smarter strategy.