52 Films by Women Vol 9. 21. Freakier Friday (Director: Nisha Ganatra)

Pictured: Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) gets freaky in front of her ex (Chad Michael Murray) in the family comedy sequel, 'Freakier Friday', written by Jordan Weiss and Elyse Hollander and directed by Nisha Ganatra. Still courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

An outlier of summer movie releases, Freakier Friday is to date the highest grossing film in 2025 solely directed by a woman. As of 15 September, according to Box Office Mojo it has grossed $148,320,369 worldwide ($91,253,519 domestic). It is followed by two other summer releases, Materialists ($101,303,614) and the remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer ($64,713,860). In fourth and fifth place are The Salt Path ($20,906,667) and the German anthology sequel, Wunderschöner ($14,523,318) co-written and directed by Karoline Herfurth; the original spawned a Polish remake. These figures are important in an era in which women’s rights are being squeezed, and women-directed movies are increasing surfacing on streaming rather than in movie theatres, for example, The Astronaut written and directed by Jess Varley. Before the year is out, award contenders like Hamnet and Die My Love may enter the top five as well as, erm, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 due in December. If women-directed films don’t compete in the marketplace, then women don’t get a chance to have a career behind the camera, and there’s a net loss to the quality of films that we see.

Freakier Friday’s success is due to a number of factors. It is a sequel that both plays on nostalgia for the 2003 remake of the body swap comedy that starred Lohan and Lee Curtis yet is suitably different because it doubles the number of characters affected. It’s a party film, exuding female energy – set pieces include a food fight, surfing, pickle ball and the inevitable climactic concert. There are multiple costume changes, a pop soundtrack, a wedding that characters seek to stop (always a plot favourite) and, at its heart, a thoroughly deglamourized Jamie Lee Curtis throwing herself into slapstick comedy. Plus a cameo from Saturday Night Live’s Chloe Fineman as an Australian dance instructor. Why Australian? It’s an accent, baby. Mostly, the film celebrates the resilience of Los Angeles, a city that survived forest fires (acknowledged in the end credits) and, at time of writing, is standing up to the current destructive and divisive President of the United States, whose peaceful removal from office can’t come soon enough.

There is one other element that may have drawn US audiences: to see the full rehabilitation of Lee Curtis’ co-star Lindsay Lohan, a child actress who transition into adulthood was marred by substance abuse and whose decline was exploited by directors such as Paul Schrader in The Canyons, in which Lohan was cast opposite a porn actor. While The Canyons represented the dark side of LA, Freakier Friday effuses its lighter side. The only substance abuse you see in this Disney Studios-produced movie involves pastries.

Pictured: Anna (Lindsay Lohan) and Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) submit to an ill-advised palm reading in the comedy sequel, 'Freakier Friday', written by Jordan Weiss and Elyse Hollander and directed by Nisha Ganatra. Still courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

Director Nisha Ganatra (Late Night, The High Note, episodes of the TV series Transparent) begins the film in energetic, pacy style that sets up tensions between three generations of a Los Angeles. There’s single mother music producer Anna Coleman (Lohan) is hammering on the door of her teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters, like Lohan a child actor maturing into adulthood) giving her twenty- and ten-minute warnings while on the phone to her psychologist mom Dr Tess (Lee Curtis), who has volunteered to drive her daughter to school. Both women negotiate boundaries that apply to modern parents. Anna won’t go in her daughter’s room. Tess seeks consent (of a sort) to interfere. By the time Anna enters the room and discovers that Harper is out surfing, Tess arrives. As a ‘compromise’ both women take Harper to school, entreating her to ‘make good choices’, a line from the 2003 film. All three women challenge convention in their own way, Dr Tess’ new book, ‘Rebelling with Respect’, summarising the film’s ‘gloves on’ approach, that is, shake things up, but don’t hurt people. Harper has a problem with her lab partner, Lily (Sophia Hammons), a Filipino-Brit who resembles a glamour model and boasts having a boyfriend in Paris. Lily won’t help with the chemistry experiment, being too self-absorbed, ignoring warnings that the materials being used are hazardous. Predictably, she absently creates a liquid reaction that oozes out of the classroom. Even more predictably, their parents are called in. In front of the principal’s office, noted chef Eric (Manny Jacinto) and frazzled record producer Anna meet and fall in love. They are both single. The Principal is single. The latter even arranges Eric and Anna’s first date. Before long, they are engaged, subject to a photo montage and are shortly to be married. Meanwhile, Anna’s star client, Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) is having a total meltdown, having been dumped by text – and hit single – by her boyfriend, Trevor, singing that his new love is better than the last one (the song title has ‘brackets Ella’). Ella doesn’t want to sing any of her songs. When she discovers a track by Anna, she asks to perform it instead.

In the meantime, hostility between Harper and Lily escalates at a school bake sale, where Harper’s attempts to hide Lily’s father’s pastries results in Tess’ cookies (‘cooled for four hours’) being placed in the bin. The two girls throw gooey cakes at each other before a mime mouths the words ‘food fight’, which someone repeats aloud lest we fail to lip read. This leads all the participants into detention and a callback for Mr Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky), who is still at the school after twenty years, something to do with a crypto currency scam. Apropos to something, the class asks to go outside where they pick up litter under the bleacher seats.

Pictured: Julia Butters, Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis and Sophia Hammons in a scene from the comedy sequel, 'Freakier Friday', written by Jordan Weiss and Elyse Hollander and directed by Nisha Ganatra. Still courtesy of Walt Disney Studios. 

Over the busy forthcoming weekend, Anna and Eric are to be married, but first there’s a fitting, an immigration hearing (for Eric), a dance rehearsal, food tasting, and bachelorette party. Tess is also taking part in the final of a pickle ball contest. Ganatra and the writers Jordan Weiss and Elyse Hollander lay out the set pieces in advance, so we know exactly where we are going as if there were a film classification notice telling you what the film contains – apparently handy for parents. What they don’t say is what happens when the characters get there.

The Pitch Perfect movies are as much an inspiration as Mary Rodgers’ source novel. High energy is maintained throughout. An early scene stealer is Saturday Night Live alumnus Vanessa Bayer as Madame Jen, who at Anna’s bachelorette party lures Anna and Tess for a reading in front of her crystal ball. She utters the spell that I had trouble recalling even though it is said over five times: ‘change the hearts you know are wrong, so that you may be where you belong’. Not only does she pull Anna and Tess in, but during a separate reading Harper and Lily, the former angry with her mother for wanting to move to London after the wedding. The four women swap bodies. Tess becomes Lily (and vice versa), Anna becomes Harper, and Harper Anna. The two pairs become separated. Madame Jen, who has multiple businesses some of which have out of date cell phone numbers, is nowhere to be found.

What happens next indulges Lee Curtis’ flair for physical comedy as Lily’s pickle ball skills are found wanting. In another scene, Lily-as-Tess rushes round a pharmacy amassing multiple products to deal with her rapidly changed body. If your idea of comedy is Tess fending off the pickleball while on her knees with a bat in front of her face, while a pair of commentators (much like Pitch Perfect’s judges) remark on the ‘amazing’ move, or being in a record store and hiding herself behind a Britney Spears album cover, or flirting with a younger man, then you will be suitably tickled. Lee Curtis manages the physical action with aplomb.

While Anna and Tess (as Harper and Lily) try to restore the quartet back to their bodies, Harper and Lily come up with a plan to stop the wedding, approaching Anna’s ex, Jake (Chad Michael Murray), who runs a record store. If Harper can get Anna and Jake back together, then the family won’t be forced to move to London. In between, they relish being seen as adults and borrow Jake’s car for a joyride of sorts.

The film delivers against the set pieces it sets up, with some surfing thrown in – Eric is not very proficient. While never threatening to become dark, the characters learn key truths about keeping the family together, with Lily hating Harper a little less.

Predictably it ends at Ella’s concert. It turns out hearts can be mended in front of thousands of screaming fans as Oasis’ Gallagher brothers discovered this past summer. Freakier Friday doesn’t deliver any residual surprises, but it hits its marks at speed and allows us to rejoice in performances, including a Dirty Dancing homage where ‘Baby’ (Anna) doesn’t leap but carries on running, avoiding the time of her life. I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing Freakier Friday in a crowded movie theatre – it was a slow Tuesday morning - but could definitely feel its kick.

Reviewed at Cineworld Ashford (Screen Ten), Kent, Tuesday 16 September 2025, 11:00am screening