The early 2000s was a great time to be a teenager (or a precocious child). There was a slew of films, TV shows and even cartoons for young people that didn’t come with the patronizing tone that is so prevalent today. They blurred the lines between what’s considered suitable for children and those on the brink of adolescence, and what’s meant for adults. Freaky Friday (2003) was one of them.
Freaky Friday finds its origins in the 1972 novel of the same name. In the book, Annabel Andrews wakes up one Friday to discover she’s stuck in her mother’s body. Annabel needs to figure out what’s happening and where her original body is, all while juggling her mother’s hectic life. The plot revolves around Annabel realizing that her mother has her work cut out for her. At the end of the book, Annabel’s mother returns home in Annabel’s body, revealing that she’d caused the switch. She wanted to teach Annabel a lesson and, apparently, give her a makeover (she was at the dentist’s office, getting Annabel’s braces removed). Mother and daughter reconcile, and balance is once again restored to the world.
When Walt Disney Pictures adapted the book into a film, they decided to even the playing field a little by tossing both mother and daughter off the deep end. Now, we have two individuals who don’t see eye to eye and assume that the other leads a simpler life. As they work together to fix the swap, they slowly come to understand and appreciate each other more by the end.
Prior to the 2003 film, there were two versions of Freaky Friday, one in 1976 and another in 1995. The 1976 version featured Jodie Foster as Annabel and Barbara Foster as Ellen, her mother. By making a wish on Friday the 13th, Annabel switches places with her mother. Simple and uncomplicated, it followed the book’s storyline closely, retaining everything right down to the dentist appointment. The 1995 Freaky Friday is where things changed for Annabel’s mom. No longer a housewife, this iteration had her as a working single mother. This is also the first time that the switch is attributed to an object, in this case an amulet. Bill, the husband in the original version, is now Ellen’s boyfriend. It is also the only case where someone other than the mother-daughter duo knows they’ve been switched.
Generally speaking, tampering with the source material often leads to disastrous results, but Freaky Friday (2003) couldn’t be more different. To appeal to the modern audience of that era, the film decided to make Anna a rebellious punk-rock teenager, and her mother, Tess, an overbearing psychiatrist who thinks her daughter is exasperating. It’s one of those cult early 2000s films, reserved to be played on repeat every Friday night (possibly on a DVD player). This movie is singlehandedly responsible for causing fear and apprehension at the sight of a fortune cookie during dinner with the family. And giving people a license to sing Baby One More Time incredibly off-key.
The tension is cranked all the way up with Tess’s wedding on the horizon, and the rehearsal dinner scheduled for the same night as the Wango Tango audition that Anna’s band, Pink Slip, wants to enter. As is the crux of the Freaky Friday story, Tess realizes that there’s a lot of truth in her daughter’s words, and she’s been misconstruing her life the whole time. The same goes for Anna, who realizes her mother wasn’t simply being overbearing for the sake of it, and was actually under a lot of pressure herself. It’s a happy ending, and the chapter is closed. There’s a vague hint of a sequel when Tess’s father and son begin arguing, but any fortune cookie intervention is quickly squashed.
In an industry plagued with way too many sequels, and nostalgia running at an all-time high, Freaky Friday (2003) gets its own follow-up act 22 years later—Freakier Friday (2025). When announced, it sounded promising. But now that it’s finally here, you can’t help but think that, like most recent sequels, Freaky Friday (2003) was better left as a standalone film.
In the 2003 film, the curse was broken with an act of selfless love, which ultimately fixed Tess and Anna’s relationship. That begged the question: how will the next film prompt a switch? The answer was simply to do a watered-down version of the first film’s story by bringing in Anna’s holier-than-thou surfer girl daughter, and soon-to-be insufferable stepdaughter, and make them switch with Anna and Tess, respectively.
And now, because this film needs to ride the nostalgia wave while simultaneously appeasing the current generation of teenagers, it’s an unholy mess. Anna’s lost all of her spunk and personality. She’s a single mom who’s given up her rockstar dreams and settled for being the manager of an upcoming popstar. Dr Tess Coleman, still the successful author/psychiatrist, has been mellowed down into a doting and indulgent grandmother. She’s been reduced to someone who’s eternally grateful to be stuck in the body of a teen from the composed, strategic shrink who thinks ten steps ahead and breaks into the teacher’s lounge to check Anna’s test scores. Post switch, geriatric jokes abound. Yikes.
“Make good choices!” is what Tess Coleman advised her daughter. Twenty-two years later, it appears as though neither of them has followed through. Everything that made both those characters so memorable, fun, and relatable has been taken away. They’ve been turned into everything they were not. There’s an entire generation of girls who grew up with the lyrics of Take Me Away as their anthem. This film takes that and says, “Congratulations, you’re old and lame now, with one foot in the grave”. And by “old” it refers to anyone upwards the age of twenty-five.
Even without the butchered characterization, there’s a huge plot hole. Anna and her daughter switching makes sense, but why Tess and the step-granddaughter? They have no quarrel with each other. She isn’t even related to them at all. It would have made more sense to switch the teenage rivals and make them come to an understanding. But that would, of course, mean losing out on the main draw of the generation that wants to see the film: Lohan and Curtis.
Before you decide that Freaky Friday (2003) should not have had a sequel at all, remember there could have actually been two. The original novel had two sequels, which were adapted into films themselves: Summer Switch (1984) and A Billion for Boris (1984). In all honesty, if Freaky Friday (2003) did have to go down the sequel route, it should have probably been done twenty years ago with Grandpa Coleman and Harry. But of course, at the time, there were plenty of new stories that didn’t necessarily need a sequel.
With all the reboots, remakes, and sequels (this summer alone, we have The Naked Gun and Happy Gilmore 2), it makes you wonder, why now? Why not then? If all the current sequels want to disrupt the original film’s storyline, then why not make a completely new franchise without reusing the name of the original? Are we now incapable of telling new stories? Or are we doomed to hate-watch older, caricaturized versions of our favorite nostalgic characters simply because they remind us of a simpler time (we’re looking at you, And Just Like That).
Of course, concepts can be reused, and the 2020 film Freaky does exactly that. Here, instead of a mother and daughter, it’s a serial killer and his intended victim. It manages to pay homage to the original novel while bringing something new to the table.
Who exactly is the target audience for Freakier Friday? The same people who watched the first one in 2003? Or the new generation who might see bits of themselves in Anna’s daughter and stepdaughter? The crumbs of nostalgia feel a little stale. It’s baiting the older target audience, while serving them spoiled fortune cookies.
The charm and humor of the first film worked because it didn’t pander to either side. Both Tess and Anna were equally at fault and reached an understanding. It didn’t drag the adults or the teens down. But in the sequel, it definitely feels as though there’s a strong undertone of ”out with the old, and in with the new.” Interestingly, this seems to be the trend these days, like we saw in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) and Lucy in Season 2 of Only Murders in the Building.
If you loved the original, then it’s probably best to give this one a pass. The original is still relevant and worth watching. If there’s one good thing that has come out of this film, it’s the new recording of Take Me Away.
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