DisneyOn most lists of “Best Body-Swap Movies,” you’ll find 2003’s Freaky Friday at, or near, the top. And for good reason: Mark Waters’ adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ 1972 novel of the same name might have been the third movie (including the 1976 Jodie Foster vehicle) to tackle the source material, but it’s easily the most definitive one. A breezy, wildly entertaining showcase for rising star Lindsay Lohan and established star Jamie Lee Curtis (who famously filled in at the last minute), 2003’s Freaky Friday was quickly accepted as a classic in the family film echelon.So how do you follow that up? By making a sequel that is, for all intents and purposes, a beat-for-beat recreation of the original, with some new Gen Z buzzwords thrown in and a frantic pace befitting the generation raised on TikTok. But despite impressively game performances from both Lohan and Curtis, and a frothy-sweet charm, Freakier Friday never emerges from the shadow of its predecessor.Twenty-two years after the events of Freaky Friday, Anna Coleman (Lohan) has given up her rockstar career to become a record-label manager for new stars, and to focus on raising her own teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters). She’s closer than ever to her psychiatrist mother Tess (Curtis), but has started to chafe at Tess’ over-enthusiastic co-parenting of Harper ever since Anna “decided to become a single mother.” But despite Anna’s embrace of gentle parenting, Harper is just as rebellious a teen as she was, and gets into trouble with a rival at school, the snooty new girl Lily (Sophia Hammons). After a fight in chemistry class between Harper and Lily gets Anna and Lily’s father Eric (Manny Jacinto) called in for a teacher-parent conference, sparks fly between the two single parents. In just six months, they’re on their way to get married, with Anna ready to uproot her and Harper’s lives to move with Eric and Lily back to London. But an encounter with a hacky fortune teller (Vanessa Bayer) at Anna’s bachelorette party leads to all four women switching bodies: Anna and Tess becoming the teens, while Harper lands in her mom’s body and Lily in Tess’ body.Freakier Friday was originally intended for a straight-to-streaming Disney+ release before it was pivoted to theatrical, and you can tell. Nisha Ganatra’s flashy direction contains the kind of overstimulating energy that you’d typically see in streaming movies trying to catch the attention of viewers glued to their phones.Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons hold their own as the adults swapped in teen bodies, but are given precious little to do. | DisneyThere’s barely any breathing room between scenes, which abruptly cut to the next without warning, sometimes in the middle of a conversation. The majority of Anna and Eric’s relationship is told through a cutesy montage, which features ticket stubs and calendar invites for their various dates, while family pictures frequently feature the two teen girls rolling their eyes. It’s effective, but fast-and-cheap storytelling — we barely get to know Harper and Lily’s personalities before they’re swapped with Anna and Tess. Harper is a surfer girl who harbors guilt over her mom giving up her career for her, while Lily likes fashion and is still grieving her deceased mom. The film speeds through the most surface-level motivations and characteristics, before we get to the meat of the movie: the switch. At which point, Freakier Friday basically just recreates Freaky Friday, with a few more confusing character twists.Jordan Weiss’ script, despite how unashamedly it attempts to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle of the original, is not to be fully blamed for Freakier Friday’s failures. The jokes are frequently funny and charming, and even allows for a few satirical pokes at trendy phenomena like gentle parenting and podcasting. But it simply doesn’t have the space to give us more depth to the new characters, or really enrich our old characters, Anna and Tess. Instead, Lohan and Curtis are basically left doing the same performances as in the first movie, though Lohan does better at embodying the resentful daughter in her mom’s body. Curtis, meanwhile, just plays “young” again, and seems to forget who exactly she’s swapped with (but, again, Lily is such a paper-thin character that you can’t really blame her). The teen stars hold their own, but it’s clear that Butters, who made an impression as the young star opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is the more seasoned actress, adding a tiny bit more emotional depth to her performance. Hammons is simply not given much to do apart from do a posh British accent and dress in suits.In her return to theatrical movies, Lohan shows that she never lost her touch for physical comedy. | DisneyThere are a few things to enjoy in Freakier Friday — Manny Jacinto makes a case that he’s Hollywood’s most underused movie star, putting on a full-force charm offensive that would make anyone swoon, even as he’s fighting his shaky British accent. Bayer is hilarious as the hacky fortune teller who doesn’t know the full extent of the spell she’s cast, and keeps trying to hawk her failed businesses to the frustrated women. The movie also allows for Lohan to tap into the impressive physical comedy that she showed as a young star, and she clearly relishes getting to let loose again. And, you know, the jokes really are pretty funny.Ultimately, despite a game cast and charming tone, Freakier Friday falls in the category of disappointing “legacy sequels,” which are too slavishly devoted to recreating the magic of the original. It turns out that lightning doesn’t strike twice.Freakier Friday opens in theaters August 8.