Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis play the time warp again in fitfully fun Freakier Friday | Canada Voices

Freakier Friday

Directed by Nisha Ganatra

Written by Jordan Weiss

Starring Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis and Manny Jacinto

Classification PG; 111 minutes

Opens in theatres Aug. 8

The freakiest thing about Freakier Friday is that, after nearly three-quarters of a century worth of adaptations of Mary Rodgers’s original 1972 children’s novel – starting in 1976 and followed up by remakes in 1995, 2003 and 2018 – no enterprising filmmaker thought to ever before switch the body-swapping formula up by doubling the fun. So congratulations to director Nisha Ganatra and screenwriter Jordan Weiss for expanding on the original concept with this sequel to the property’s 2003 iteration, which not only swaps a daughter for a mother but also a step-granddaughter for a step-grandmother. (Ganatra and Weiss also deserve some praise for resisting the obvious subtitle: Freakier Friday: The Next Generation.)

The best summer movies of all time, according to our readers

I’m less sure, though, that the filmmakers deserve such hearty pats on the back for the rest of Freakier Friday, which frequently struggles to balance the cute goofiness of its source material with the overly busy machinations of its overstuffed narrative. By multiplying the number of body-swaps, the script seems to have accidentally increased its plot padding, too, resulting in a mushy mess that is only fitfully charming. But when the film does work, it delivers the kind of thank-goodness-it’s-Friday success story that will warm the heart of every long-time Lindsay Lohan fan out there (we are legion).

The one-time tabloid target returns here as Anna, who about two decades ago magically body-swapped positions with her overbearing mother Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis). After both having learned some valuable intergenerational lessons, Anna is now a single mother to a rebellious teen daughter named Harper (Julia Butters), while Tess is working as a podcaster, the favoured profession of every lazy contemporary screenwriter out there. Things are mostly calm in the family, until Anna meets the charming British chef (Canadian Manny Jacinto), whose own teenage daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) is none too pleased with having moved from London to Los Angeles.

After a surprisingly long set-up – it takes almost half an hour for any kind of body-swapping to enter the picture – the entire clan is spiritually rearranged. Now, Tess is Lily, Lily is Tess, Harper is Anna, and Anna is Harper.

The scenario is not quite as complicated as that might sound, given that each actor delivers an ace comic performance that represents new highs in on-screen mimicry. Everyone in the cast is in fact so good – with Curtis committing herself most to the gentle absurdity – that they frequently leapfrog over Weiss’s hammy script, whose contrivances aren’t rooted so much in the magical conceit of the property as they are in faux-wacky family-drama predicaments.

Ganatra’s visual style is also worth discussing, with the film torn between genuinely interesting and complex camera set-ups and the kind of empty-calorie editing that is a hallmark of the streaming era. The Canadian director certainly knows how to concoct crowd-pleasing fizz – see her underrated music-world 2020 comedy The High Note – but seems to repeatedly capitulate to a kind of bland Disney+ house style.

If that’s the price that audiences have to pay to finally see Lohan back on screen, though, then so be it. As the frazzled but headstrong Anna, the actor immediately reminds everyone – moviegoers, the film industry, TMZ hounds – just why she once commanded so much attention in the first place. TGIF indeed.