Cert - PG

Run-time - 1 hour 51 minutes

Director - Nisha Ganatra

Mother and daughter Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna (Lindsay Lohan) find themselves in another pre-wedding body swap situation, this time with Anna's daughter Harper (Julia Butters) and step-daughter-to-be Lily (Sophia Hammons).

On the surface Freakier Friday strikes as the kind of film that Disney would normally reserve for direct placement on their streaming service. Another body swap situation just days before a wedding, this time between four people instead of two. Perhaps the returning forces of Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as mother and daughter Tess and Anna are what have led this belated sequel to the big screen.

In fact, the pair are very much the forces which once again hold the film up and make it what it is. Much like the first film, the content of the sequel is generally fine. A functional, if predictable, plot with some decent gags thrown in here and there with the fun brought about by the lead performances - with Curtis and Lohan appearing to be having the time of their lives reuniting.

This time instead of swapping bodies with each other they find themselves embodying Anna's daughter, Harper (Julia Butters) and step-daughter-to-be Lily (Sophia Hammons), and vice versa. The teenagers have hated each other since before their parents met, Lily's father Eric played by Manny Jacinto), one wants to leave LA while the other wants to go to fashion school in London. So, in adult form they plan to break up the wedding with less than 48 hours to go.

Successfully avoiding cliched and cringe-inducing lines about age differences there are plenty of funny instances of the quartet getting used to their hopefully temporary new bodies. Whilst Butters and Hammons gain chuckles whizzing around the city on e-scooters making the most of fast metabolism, Curtis and Lohan get the bigger laughs as they play teenagers trapped in bodies which feel tired or sometimes simply refuse to move.

There's a constantly moving energy to their scenes which keeps up the pace of the almost two-hour run-time, and it's clear that the film, and those behind it, want to focus on them as the returning characters. And, as mentioned, they bring about the biggest laughs with the physical elements of their gleefully chaotic performances.

Disney have taken something of a plunge for themselves in this current era by releasing the film in cinemas, and it's all the better for that being the case, especially with an audience which lets loose just like the leads and laughs along with them. While not all of its emotional beats entirely land, although there is some effect amongst their slightly extended nature in the later stages of the film, there are plenty of chuckles to see things through in what ends up being a fun and enjoyable film which knows not to take itself too seriously, and just as importantly where its strengths lie. It's rather infectious fun.

Four stars