Freakier Friday

After this egregiously lame outing in the body-switcheroo franchise starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, let's hope no more copies are forthcoming.

In general I’m pretty tolerant of sequels, remakes, reboots. If it’s well-done and captures the spirit of the original, why not? It’s probably why I’ve not tired of superhero movies or Star Wars flicks, when I know many have.

“Freakier Friday” not only isn’t a very good sequel, it’s a business case for not making them. You may remember the 2003 body-switcheroo comedy starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis about a mother and daughter at odds who find themselves body-swapped with each other, and learn some life lessons. (I did, but foggily.)

So now it’s a generation later and Lohan and Curtis have moved up an age bracket, and there’s new teenagers on the scene. Anna Coleman (Lohan) will switch place with her own 9th-grade kid, Harper (Julia Butters), and the cycle will repeat, right? Well, yes. But that would leave grandma Tess (Curtis) out of the loop.

So she’s also given her own body to switch with: Lily (Sophia Hammons), the soon-to-be stepsister of Harper/stepdaughter of Anna, who’s about to marry gorgeous British (by way of the Philippines) chef Eric (Manny Jacinto). This raises some metaphysical questions, since you apparently don’t have to be a blood relation of somebody you’re switching with.

I don’t know if the double-switcheroo works on paper (screenplay by Elyse Hollander and Jordan Weiss) but it sure goes clonk on the screen. For starters, even though Lily is British, when she switches into Tess’ body her accent goes away, and vice-versa. How can you consciousness flip but your speech pattern doesn’t?

Honestly, it just feels lazy — like the actresses didn’t feel like they could pull off the accents, so they just didn’t bother.

The plot is a fast-paced, nonsensical farce of partially overheard conversations, situational set-ups, chance run-ins and forced comedy happenstance. The material is pitched at the tone (and quality) of one of those Disney TV shows for tween girls.

Director Nisha Ganatra has mostly done TV work (“Transparent”) but also a few films, including 2019’s “Late Night,” which I really dug but not many others.

They really lean into the old jokes, and Curtis is proudly game as lamenting (with Lily inside her head) her craggy face and sagging body. Lily’s a wannabe fashion designer, so her first order of business is dressing Tess up in all sort of outfits that would’ve been age-inappropriate in the last movie.

Harper and Lily can’t stand each other, so when they come into the power and independence that comes with adult bodies, they set about to ruin the impending marriage between Anna and Eric. This includes looking up Anna’s old boyfriend, Jake (Chad Michael Murray), to see if he’s still interested — though he secretly has the hots for Tess.

Scrolling through Anna’s phone to find Jake’s info, Lily and Harper are transfixed by Facebook, which to these Gen Zers is like some sort of dusty digital artifact. “It’s like a database for old people!”

There’s also some mild send-up of modern Brené Brown-style soft-touch approach to relationships, which Tess, a therapist/author, has attempted to instill in Anna with limited success. (Her new podcast is called “Rebelling with Respect.”) Eric, as an idealized male movie sex symbol, practices this stuff in the best beta-male fashion.

“No space for holding feelings!” Anna announces, finally fed up.

There’s a contrived subplot involving Anna’s job in the music biz. A former aspiring rock star with her band Pink Slip, she gave it all up when she had a kid and is now managing rising teen pop sensation Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), who is morose over having been dumped by her boyfriend. It culminates in a big photo shoot that, for some reason, Harper and Lily (in Anna and Tess’ bodies, participate in.

I was bored out of my skull watching this movie, I’m now bored writing about it and I think I’ll wrap this review up before you become bored reading it. Let’s just hope there are no more copies forthcoming.