Jamie Lee Curtis Defends Freakier Friday Amid Negative Reviews

Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reunited onscreen for the Disney sequel Freakier Friday. The new film sees the two stars reprise their beloved roles from the 2003 hit Freaky Friday alongside fellow original cast members Chad Michael Murray and NCIS alum Mark Harmon.

And while everyone involved had the best time working on the sequel, Freakier Friday hasn't gotten the best reception from critics. Amid the bad reviews, Curtis is refusing to stay silent.

How Jamie Lee Curtis Landed Her Freaky Friday Role

Disney's Freaky Friday was a remake of a 1976 film that saw Barbara Harris and a young Jodie Foster playing a mother and daughter Tess and Anna Coleman, who end up swapping bodies. Initially, Annette Bening and the late Michelle Trachtenberg were cast in the lead roles. In the end, however, Benning backed out of the project, and Trachtenberg had a schedule conflict.

Eventually, the film's producers approached Curtis after seeing her on the television show True Lies. For the actress, the casting had been unexpected. Curtis, who first rose to fame for the 1978 slasher flick Halloween, didn't think she would still get offered lead roles considering her age at that time. 'The last person I thought would get a chance to headline a movie in her 40s would be me,' Curtis once said during an interview with Phase9 in 2003.

Freaky Friday would go on to be a cinematic hit, pulling in over £119 million at the global box office against an estimated production budget of £19.3 million. The family comedy would go on to become a cult classic, prompting Disney to greenlight a sequel with Freakier Friday going into production in 2024.

The follow-up movie picks up years later with Lohan's character now a mother herself to two teenage girls. As expected, another body swap happens with the two adult women having a switcheroo with the two teens. Together, the four women find themselves in another freaky situation. And this time, some critics are far from impressed.

Jamie Lee Curtis Calls Out Sequel Reviews

Following the release of Freakier Friday in early August, critics have expressed mixed feelings about the Disney sequel, which might explain its 73% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (in contrast, Freaky Friday scored 88%). While some praise Curtis and Lohan's performances and onscreen chemistry, others aren't impressed by what they came up with more than two decades later.

For some critics, Freakier Friday has good laughs but not much else when it comes to the actual story. Stephanie Zacharek, a film critic for TIME, expressed a similar sentiment in her review, writing that it 'manages to humiliate everybody' involved in the movie. In response to an excerpt of Zacharek's review posted on Instagram, Curtis commented on the post writing, 'SEEMS a TAD HARSH. SOME people LOVE it. Me being one.'

Amid the mixed reviews, Freakier Friday is doing well at the box office. Since its release, the film has already raked in an estimated global haul of £33 million. So, not all critics like it. Fans are rallying around this new family comedy, nonetheless.