Review Roundup: Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan Return in FREAKIER FRIDAY

Reviews are in for Freakier Friday, Disney's highly anticipated sequel to the 2003 fan-favorite film. The movie, which features the return of Disney Legend Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, will be released exclusively in theaters this Friday, August 8, 2025. Find out what critics think of the film below!

In the film, Curtis and Lohan reprise their roles as Tess and Anna Coleman. The story picks up years after Tess (Curtis) and Anna (Lohan) endured the identity crisis, which caused the duo to switch bodies. Anna now has a daughter of her own and a soon-to-be stepdaughter. As they navigate the myriad challenges that come when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover that lightning might indeed strike twice. 

Freakier Friday is directed by Nisha Ganatra and is based on the book Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers. The film also stars Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rosalind Chao, Chad Michael Murray, Vanessa Bayer, Mark Harmon, and Tony Award-nominated playwright Jordan E. Cooper.

The original movie is a body-swap comedy that became a Disney staple in the mid-2000s upon its release. That itself was a remake of the 1976 movie of the same name starring a young Jodie Foster. The story also later became a stage musical featuring music by Tom Kitt and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, which was adapted for television in 2018.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: "...the double swap lends “Freakier Friday” a juggling-balls-in-the-air quality that gives off a pleasant hum. It’s fun to ride the film’s complications; it follows through on its own logic just enough to create a watchably friendly Disney landscape.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: "Another version of this movie might have wanted to dip its toe into the issues of body image and identity: Freakier Friday keeps it light, partly as a result of Curtis’s jokey grandma, in whose knockabout generational presence there is no question of anything tricky. Curtis gets the laughs with her puppyishly uninhibited performance and there are some great gags, including one at the expense of oldsters who use a certain social media platform."

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: "Naturally, someone’s going to say something platitudinous like “Family is everything” by the end, when all those differences that keep the characters at loggerheads melt away and a melding of the two families at last seems doable. But I think I would have preferred a shot-for-shot remake to this painfully stretched cash-grab."

Pete Hammond, Deadline: "I do have to confess that with all of this body switching and the various subplots Weiss has introduced, it isn’t always easy to keep track of it all, but in the end it pays off, a feel-good comedy ripe for the times as evidenced by the loud laughter at the screening I attended of this nostalgic Disney film that is about as Disney as it gets."

Kate Erbland, IndieWire: "Leave it to Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan to crack the code as to what makes a good legacyquel, which they’ve done quite handily with their long-gestating “Freaky Friday” sequel, Nisha Ganatra’s charming and quite fun “Freakier Friday.”

William Bibbiani, TheWrap: “Freakier Friday” is the best kind of legacy sequel. It harkens back to what made the original work without literally doing the same thing all over again. It reunites a great cast and gives the new stars just as much time to shine. It’s full of easter eggs from the original but isn’t beholden to lazy nostalgia, and mostly works on its own, whether you’ve seen the 2003 version of “Freaky Friday” or not."

Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly: "But what makes Freakier Friday so special is that amid the laugh-out-loud humor and welcome fan service, there's also a beautiful film here about parenting, coming-of-age, loneliness, grief, loss, and sacrifice."

Kevin Maher, The Times: "There is, to repeat, a lot going on here. But one of the delights of Jordan Weiss’s hugely ambitious screenplay is that everything, somehow, makes loose sense. The other delight is the witheringly funny one-liner, delivered by Lily, when she first discovers Facebook. “Look,” she says, “it’s a database of old people!”"

Watch the trailer for Freakier Friday below:

Photo credit: Disney