On Screen: “Freakier Friday”
Freakier Friday
As an admitted nostalgia nerd, I was eagerly anticipating “Freakier Friday,” a sequel to “Freaky Friday” (2003) in which mama Jamie Lee Curtis and her teenage daughter Lindsay Lohan inadvertently exchange bodies.
In this updated version, psychotherapist Tess Colman (Curtis) is helping her now-30ish single daughter Anna (Lohan) prepare for her upcoming marriage to widowed Eric Davies (Manny Jacinto), a London restauranteur who just opened a new venue in Los Angeles.
Problem is: Anna’s surly surfer teenage daughter Harper (Julia Butters) loathes Eric’s snobbish fashionista teenage daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) and dreads the idea of moving to London.
A quirk of fate leads them to a phony part-time palm-reading psychic (Vanessa Bauer) who seemingly causes a four-way body swap. Suddenly, Grandma Tess inhabits mean-girl Lily’s body and Lily is in Tess’s — while mother Anna is in daughter Harper’s body and Harper is in Anna’s.
Sounds confusing? It is!
That’s because screenwriter Jordan Weiss (“Dollface”) and director Nisha Ganatra (“Late Night”) fail to delineate innate relationships and individual characterizations. For example: if Tess is in Lily’s body, shouldn’t she try to imitate Lily’s British accent? Conversely, why doesn’t Lily talk like elderly Tess?
Obviously, the actresses do their best with what little they’re given.
In a stunning career renaissance, 67 year-old Jamie Lee Curtis has demonstrated her versatility, while 39 year-old Lindsay Lohan recaptures the charismatic comic timing that originally launched her career.
But — bottom line — this awkward wannabe comedy just isn’t funny.
In addition, Anna was the former leader of the rock band Pink Slip; she now manages the career of Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a distressed global pop star. That inevitably leads to a forgettable musical interlude. Even worse are a high school bake sale food fight and pathetic pickleball sequence.
On the other hand, one bright spot is the throwback reappearance of Chad Michael Murray as Anna’s high school crush Jake, who has always yearned for Tess.
FYI: The original concept is based on Mary Rodgers’s 1972 children’s novel.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Freakier Friday” is a floundering 4, playing in theaters.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.