Finally, a legacy sequel that works!

“Freakier Friday” is the sequel to the 2003 film “Freaky Friday,” and features Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reprising their roles. In the film, Curtis and Lohan again switch bodies, this time with their teenage granddaughter and daughter (Sophia Hammond and Julia Butters, respectively) and must find a way to switch back before Lohan’s wedding. Manny Jacinto, Mark Harmon, and Chad Michael Murray also star, as Nisha Ganatra directs.

I love the first “Freaky Friday.” I saw it as a kid in theaters in 2003, and have continued to watch it almost yearly to this day. When a sequel was announced, I was kind of excited but also a bit wary, since so many legacy sequels fall flat or rely too much on nostalgia. Luckily, “Freakier Friday” is the rare legacy sequel that honors the source material, as well as the original fans.

Lindsay Lohan had the world on a string back in the early-2000s, starring in several successful Disney films, as well as “Mean Girls.” After some time away and personal problems, Lohan has recently returned to the limelight with a series of holiday films on Netflix (most of which I really enjoy!). It’s so cool to see her having fun again up on the big screen, and paired once again opposite Jamie Lee Curtis. The two have a warm chemistry and again are great playing against type and poking fun at themselves, especially Curtis who gets to make several jokes at her own aging expense.

Newcomers Sophia Hammond and Julia Butters are both solid, too, playing the Lohan and Curtis stuck inside the body of Gen Z’ers. They have some good chemistry together, and the film does an entertaining job making fun of every generation. At times it can get confusing trying to remember in-the-moment who is stuck inside who, and what that person’s motivations are, but it never really holds the film back too much.

One thing I really appreciate about “Freakier” is it’s a sequel that is made firstly for the crowd that saw the original in 2003 (aka millennials). It would’ve been easy to just make this a Gen Z update and pander to the 13-20 crowd (like the new “I Know What You Did Last Summer”), but instead there are needle drops of early-2000s bands, jokes about how people in their 30s are getting tired and sore, and the style of humor itself isn’t much different from the first film. It feels like a proper sequel that honors the first, and you actually care what these characters have been up to over the past 20 years, without plot points or characters coming across as forced.

“Freakier Friday” is a blast. Between this and “The Naked Gun” (a riot), it’s so refreshing to be getting comedies back on the big screen. This was originally supposed to be dumped onto Disney+ which would have been a shame because watching it on a packed theater full of millennials reliving their youth and young families sharing the story with their own children for the first time, was so much fun, and why we love going to the movies.

Critics Rating: 8/10