It’s a tale as old as modern time: A mother and her young teenage daughter are locked in a battle of wits against wisdom as they are each convinced the other couldn’t possibly understand their struggles. And presto, a magical switcheroo into each other’s bodies to experience life in the actual shoes of their would-be nemesis as a lesson of compassion and empathy.
Mary Rogers’s novel Freaky Friday was first published in 1972 and remains in print today, quite a feat for books from that era in a current-day publishing landscape that’s hyperfocused on the new. It’s seen several film versions including iterations in 1976, 2003, and 2018 (but we won’t talk about the straight-to-streaming 2018 embarrassment here).
While daily life has certainly changed for women and girls over these almost five decades thanks to technological development, mother-daughter angst remains timeless. This specific story is so compelling that the 2003 version is about to get another sequel in August 2025, reuniting its original cast of Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom have been permitted to age on screen by an industry that often discards women once they pass the 30-year mark. So, putting the 1976 and 2003 versions of Freaky Friday back to back reveals several fascinating things about consent and aging.
In the original film, both Annabel (Jodie Foster) and Ellen (Barbara Harris) make a wish at the same moment to be in the other’s shoes. Because it was Friday the 13th, this wish came true, forcing their reckoning with each other and themselves. The two women go on separate journeys of exploration and overwhelm until they reach a boiling point where they once again, out of desperation, make a wish to switch back and return to their respective bodies.
In contrast, the 2003 version begins with what Anna (Lohan) calls “strange Asian voodoo.” Local Chinese restaurant owner Pei Pei’s (Rosalind Chao) unnamed mother (Lucille Soong) enchants two fortune cookies, leading Anna and Tess (Curtis) to switch bodies overnight. This is a troubling moment of Orientalism and Othering that hasn’t aged well in an otherwise fun romp through magical realism. Unlike the original, Anna and Tess figure out quickly what’s happened and continue to work together to get through their school and work days (and wedding rehearsal dinner!) until they can reverse the spell. Ultimately in the remake, it’s not so simple to get back into their own skin. They each need to commit a selfless act for the other, and once this organically takes place they are restored and given a fresh start with newfound respect for their relationship.
While the effects of aging during the spectrum of womanhood from puberty to menopause are not consensual and can’t be stopped without medical intervention, the 2003 version of Freaky Friday also ends up exploring all the different nonconsensual situations that women go through from childhood to adulthood. Aside from the switch itself, Anna is being punished by her English teacher Mr. Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky) because her mother wouldn’t go out with him in high school. Anna’s crush Jake (Chad Michael Murray) becomes obsessed with her mother, going so far as to harass and stalk her from her house to her engagement party with the intention of breaking up her marriage. Even Anna’s little brother and Tess’s son Harry (Ryan Malgarini) behaves like a jerk to his sister because he thinks it’s a game when it’s actually causing his sister damage and added stress. The only man in this story who values boundaries and has clear lines of consent with all the women in his orbit is Tess’s fiance Ryan (Mark Harmon). [Ironically, in real life Mark Harmon has been accused of assault by his NCIS costar Pauley Perrette, who alleged he physically attacked her while on set.]
I do love that in the original story Annabel and Ellen make a choice to walk in each other’s shoes. But the remake is far more accurate to girl’s and women’s lived experiences when it comes to things happening to our bodies without our permission, beginning most dramatically in girlhood and continuing into adulthood — from puberty to menopause, and thousands of events big and small in between. Every so often a thread begins on social media where women share the first time they experienced nonconsensual and sexualizing behavior from adult men, and these stories happened to women when they were as young as six or seven years old. And these incidents, incidentally, don’t stop until women reach their 40s and 50s, becoming invisible for certain kinds of predatory behaviors.
What’s extra fascinating is that the Freaky Friday remake came out just before the #MeToo era, when rampant sexual harassment and abuse was taking place with the only consequences being ruined careers of women, not their powerful abusers who would continue their violence with impunity for another decade and longer. Not only does the 2003 Freaky Friday more accurately reflect the nonconsensual things our bodies go through as we age, it also highlights what was happening in Hollywood itself to young girls and women alike. In the years since, so many shocking documentaries about child abuse in Hollywood have come out, like Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV about Disney’s rival channel Nickelodeon’s horrific behind-the-scenes practices that left so many children both physically and psychologically damaged by serial predators.
The first time I saw Freaky Friday I was the same age as its young protagonist. When the sequel came out, I was in a liminal phase of my mid-twenties but still young enough to engage with Anna’s angst even though in 2003 I was closer in age to Tess (Curtis); I hadn’t yet lived fully independently as I transitioned into marriage. Freakily, it wouldn’t be until now, at 46, when I’m on my own after a lifetime of codependent relationships that I fully understand Tess’s own angst at trying to manage it all, and identify with her deeply on a personal level now.
That said — and even without a daughter of my own — watching these films again now was jarring as I related with the moms in both Freaky Friday films more than the girls. I’m finding myself curious about whether and how I’ll relate to Jamie Lee Curtis’s grandmother body swap in Freakier Friday, especially given some of the rather painful ageism just in the trailer that suggests a great discomfort bordering on disgust with a postmenopausal body in its 60s as Curtis swaps bodies with her granddaughter.
It remains to be seen how well Freakier Friday handles these themes of aging and consent. But what’s fundamentally remarkable is both Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan have been allowed to age on screen, something of a feat these days in remakes and sequels that often replace the original older women stars with young faces. This fact alone makes Freakier Friday one of the more socially and culturally important films hitting screens this year. And because angst about aging is forever, both biologically and psychologically, we can safely predict that Freakier Friday will resonate in particular with its women audiences — for better or worse.
Freakier Friday will be released in theaters on August 8, 2025.
