Freakier Friday

image for Freakier Friday

Short takes

Not suitable under 8; parental guidance to 9 (language and themes)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Freakier Friday
  • a review of Freakier Friday completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 11 August 2025.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 8 Not suitable due to language and themes.
Children aged 8–9 Parental guidance recommended due to language and themes.
Children aged 10 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Freakier Friday
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: Mild coarse language
Length: 111 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

More than twenty years after their original body-swap experience, Anna (Lindsay Lohan) is now a single mum raising her teenage daughter Harper (Julia Butters), while her own mother Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) tries to help by constantly interfering. When Harper has a falling out with visiting British student Lily (Sophia Hammons), which results in damage to the science department, Anna and Lily’s father Eric (Manny Jacinto) are called to the school. Much to the horror of both girls, Anna and Eric share an instant attraction which leads to a date and ultimately to an engagement. The prospect of moving to London and living as a blended family causes tensions to run high and when Anna, Tess and the two teens meet a fortune-teller the night of the engagement party, it appears inevitable that some cosmic force is bound to intervene. Sure enough, when the four awake the following morning, Anna is inhabiting Harper’s body while Harper is in hers and Tess is now Lily and Lily, much to her horror, is now an elderly grandmother. Anna and Tess call on lessons previously learned to help them navigate the situation but all to no avail and with the wedding looming, they decide to tackle life as best they can in their current states. While masquerading as adults, Lily and Harper decide that they need to change their parents’ minds about the marriage and they set about sabotaging Anna and Eric’s upcoming nuptials. The girls begin to bond as they spend time together but when their plan finally works, it doesn’t have the effect they intended.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Family breakdown; Death of a parent; Blended families; Magical curses; Rebellion.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

  • Lily and Harper accidentally derail a science experiment causing foam to fill their science classroom and burst through the windows.
  • A huge food fight ensues when Lily dumps Tess’s bake sale cookies in the trash and Anna smears a pavlova down Lily’s chest. Food is thrown wildly, students are hit and fall to the ground, and the principal is hit in the face with a pie and has to be taken to hospital due to an allergic reaction.
  • A bunch of high schoolers throw trash at Lily.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

  • A fortune teller goes into a momentary trance and uses a deep, unnatural voice when describing what is to come. Shortly thereafter, a strange earthquake shakes the room and, later, the women wake up in alternate bodies.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

  • Parcheesi and Boggle are both mentioned and enthusiastically endorsed.
  • Capitol Records
  • Walgreens
  • Fixodent
  • Starbucks
  • Facebook is shown and used to locate someone from Anna’s past.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • Tess, inhabited by Lily, tells a young guy that she thinks he is cute.
  • ‘Tess’ tells ‘Anna’ that she has to be sexy and make a “grand, sexy entrance” to her old boyfriend’s store. ‘Anna’ then proceeds to bite her lip, flick her hair and strike sexy poses in an attempt to be more alluring.
  • Anna and Eric take Tango lessons to prepare for their wedding dance. The instructor tries to make the dance as sexy as possible.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • Anna and Eric kiss on various occasions. When Harper inhabits Anna’s body, the two women make excuses for ‘Anna’ not to kiss Eric.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

  • Characters drink wine and champagne on various occasions.
  • Harper and Lily are very excited to be drinking alcohol while inhabiting the bodies of Anna and Tess.
  • ‘Harper’ takes champagne out of ‘Anna’s’ hand at an engagement party where most guests are drinking.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Dipstick
  • Twit
  • Idiot
  • Stupid
  • Multi-hyphenate lunatic
  • Bloody backstabber
  • Piss off
  • Hell.

In a nutshell

Freakier Friday is a fantasy, comedy-drama and sequel to the 2003 Freaky Friday film. With familiar characters, a similar plot and new twists, the film is likely to appeal to fans of the original, and is best suited to audiences over the age of nine.

The main messages from this movie are that it is important to be able to see the world from different perspectives; that everyone should be true to themselves as opposed to conforming to expectations; and that love, empathy and understanding can bridge even the most extreme generational gaps.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Empathy
  • Communication
  • Forgiveness
  • Compassion
  • Unity.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children the importance of communicating openly and honestly with loved ones, no matter how difficult that may be.