The year is 2003. The first series of The X Factor is still in development; Love, Actually is bringing festive cheer and a romantic stalker to a cinema near you; and women everywhere are wearing slouch boots, slogan tees and Rachel Stevens hair layers.
We are at the tail end of an era when Hollywood profited from making teen movies, notably Freaky Friday, a wildly successful body-swap comedy starring Jamie Lee Curtis and the young screen sensation Lindsay Lohan.
Two decades later we have the latest in a parade of long-gestating sequels, a variable collection that includes Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Independence Day: Resurgence, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
The good news is that Freakier Friday is better than such recent Disney IP revivals as Hocus Pocus 2, even if the film is a little cluttered.
READ MORE
Curtis and Lohan reprise their roles, but their characters have moved on from slammed doors. Curtis’s Tess is now a hands-on grandmother to the teenage Harper (Julia Butters), the only daughter of Lohan’s music-biz manager, Anna.
A playground altercation between Harper and Lily (Sophia Hammons), a snooty new arrival from England, lands their parents in the principal’s office, where a spark ignites between Anna and Lily’s father, Eric (Manny Jacinto). This chance encounter blossoms into a whirlwind romance, culminating in an engagement that neither daughter greets with enthusiasm.
Cue the body-swapping: in this latest reimagining the magical mix-up expands to a four-way generational tangle, with the teenagers inhabiting the bodies of Anna and Tess and the adults hoovering up fast food. The results are messy but charming.
Jordan Weiss’s screenplay is not short of zingers. “I put my heart and soul into those songs,” Anna’s pop-star charge whines. “No, a 44-year-old Dutch music producer did,” comes the pithy retort.
This old-school confection, smartly reuniting the original cast, delights in every silly scene.
In cinemas from Friday, August 8th
