Freakier Friday: An utterly cluttered Friday

Nisha Ganatra’s directorial, based on Mary Rodgers’ book ‘Freaky Friday’, comes up as a frequel to the hit 2003 film directed by Mark Waters. Now, this one is surely freakier given its ambition of a double body swap, but the so-called comedy is not as happening.

Here’s double the complications, too. Anna (Lohan) is now a single mother with a teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters). She falls for Eric (Manny Jacinto), a sexy widower from London, with Lily (Sophia Hammons), a similarly aged daughter as hers. Lily is an aspiring fashionista. She and Harper are not in the least bit friendly; in fact, they are already arch enemies, making the prospect of their respective single parents getting hitched not kosher.

A psychic (Vanessa Bayer) inadvertently casts a spell and Anna and Harper switch places, as do Lily and Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis), who plays Harper’s grandmother. Anna’s still-hot ex, Jake (Murray), becomes the bait to nix the wedding. The Gen Z troublemakers have to navigate life as Anna and Tess. So, will walking in each other’s shoes help them find the way back into their own?

The actors use rote mechanics to essay their transformations and it’s not funny in the least. The swap between Anna and Harper doesn’t allow for much differences to crop up. Their present personality types are too similar to create valid friction. The body swap between the control freak, ageing, psychotherapist grand-mom Tess and teen-snob Lily is a little more yielding, and there are a few minor laughs therein. But Tess doesn’t get Lily’s accent after the swap, only the brattish nature, which doesn’t seem much different from her previous persona; so, even that doesn’t yield many laughs.

Lohan, as Harper, attempting to flirt with the man she thinks is her mother’s secret boyfriend, and Curtis as Lily shopping for old-age products are just mildly amusing. Lily and Harper’s school time wars don’t enrich the narrative.

Disconnected set-pieces in a jumbled plot don’t generate many laughs; neither does it spell coherence. While trying to break up their parents’ engagement, Harper and Lily discover that they really want to be sisters. Anna, the former member of the rock band Pink Slip (also from ‘Freaky Friday’), now the manager of Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a global pop star, we discover, has been writing songs on the sly. After being transplanted, Butters and Hammons fall off their scooters; realising their bodies are still young, they gorge on a mountain of junk food.

Such complications are way too many to play out lucidly.

‘Freakier Friday’ mixes nostalgia and sentiment, but minus the major laughs that the earlier film scored. Curtis and Lohan get shriller, Mark Harmon is wasted and it’s left to Butters and Hammons to generate some spark.

The film lacks originality; it’s basically fan service without any great mythology to attract and sustain newer audiences. ‘Freaky Friday’ turned out fairly entertaining, but ‘Freakier Friday’ makes for a tedious, dismal watch.