I’m entirely aware that looking for logic in a sequel to Freaky Friday is, to quote one Cher Horowitz, “as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie”. The 2003 adaptation of Mary Rodgers’s 1972 novel saw Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis swap bodies via some cultural stereotyping in a Chinese restaurant, so that mother and daughter could literally walk in each other’s shoes. No one really questioned how this happened, and what it might suggest about the existence of magical or higher powers. And this time around, when they swap bodies again, no one contacts an exorcist despite it being done via a fortune teller (Vanessa Bayer) who speaks in demonic tongues.
And that’s fine. As an audience, we accept the magical realist conceit, and in return we receive jokes about adults dressing like teenagers and teenagers horrified by butts that sag and knees that crack. And yet, I still have a bone to pick with the Freaky Friday universe. Here, Lohan’s Anna, who is set to marry British chef Eric (Manny Jacinto), swaps bodies with her daughter Harper (Julia Butters). Meanwhile, Eric’s also-British daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) swaps with Anna’s mother, Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis). Somehow, though, their accents stay the same – it’s as if the film is proposing that Britishness lives in the larynx and not in the brain. At least it might have been funny to see Curtis attempt a silly little accent – and Freakier Friday is sadly in desperate need of more funny.
