Director Mark Waters was really on a roll back in the early 2000s, with the one-two punch of Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, both starring the up-and-coming Lindsay Lohan. Waters arguably never made a movie of the same quality ever again, and Lohan kind of disappeared from the public eye after all that happened to her in the early to mid 00’s. Lohan has slowly been making her way back after some hit Netflix Christmas movies, and Jamie Lee Curtis just won an Oscar. And as a media consuming public, nostalgia is the thing these days. So, with all these factors combined, it felt like the perfect time for a Freaky Friday sequel. Freaky Friday (2003) itself was a remake of the 1976 film of the same name, which was an adaptation of the 1972 children’s novel by Mary Rodgers. I went into Nisha Ganatra’s Freakier Friday, releasing Friday, almost exactly 22 years after the first, with muted expectations. I thought the trailers looked lousy. It felt like a very bland, very forced nostalgia bait/cash grab situation. Freakier Friday, however, is one of this summer’s best surprises, and a worthy successor to a beloved film.

22 years after the events of Freaky Friday, Anna (Lindsay Lohan) is a successful music producer who has largely left her rock star dreams behind. She’s the single mother of Harper (Julia Butters) and she has a great relationship with her mother Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis), who she swapped bodies with once upon a time. Anna meet-cutes with Eric (Manny Jacinto), a dreamy and British widowed dad at Harper’s school, and Eric’s teenage daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) doesn’t get along with Harper. After some time has passed, Anna and Eric are about to be married and tensions are high among our four leads. After an interaction with a sketchy psychic (Vanessa Bayer) at Anna’s bachelorette party, Harper and Lily switch bodies with Anna and Tess, respectively. Chaos, hilarity and life lessons ensue.

Freakier Friday is better than it has any right to be. I was expecting this to be garbage and imagine my surprise when I found Mamma Mia 2 levels of unexpected sequel greatness here. I was consistently impressed by the tightrope Jordan Weiss’ script walks, because it’s giving you the nostalgia and the warm and cozy vibes, but it’s decidedly not the same movie as the first. I also thought it might be confusing to do a four-person body swap and it never is. We never don’t know who is inhabiting someone else’s body. The movie is consistently hilarious and surprisingly touching, and perhaps most admirably, it’s doing something that feels very different from the first and it efficiently understands the differences between the generations it’s depicting. Ultimately this is a story about the ways a broken family finds its way back to one another, and somehow Freakier Friday feels fresh, like it exists right now.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan have not missed a beat in 22 years, and they still have terrific comedic chemistry with one another. This script gives both of them the real estate to tackle some elaborate physical comedy moments and some emotionally tender scenes as well. It’s just such a pleasure to see these two actresses back in their element, and I would absolutely be open to the idea of them doing this again, provided the script is as good as it is here. Julia Butters, a young actress best known for her scene-stealing role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Sophia Hammons, making her feature film debut here, are also very good. Both actresses make a strong impression and hold their own against the vets with whom they’re sharing the screen.

Among the new cast members, we have Manny Jacinto, who I’m most familiar with from the TV series The Good Place, and this film finds him in an entirely different kind of role, and I very much enjoyed his presence and his accent work. We also have Saturday Night Live’s Vanessa Bayer as the kooky psychic who causes this whole mess, and she brings plenty of laughs as well. Speaking of SNL alums, we also have a cameo from Chloe Fineman. We also have Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, probably best known for her role in Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, starring as Anna’s gen Z pop superstar client Ella, who is dealing with a personal crisis. She’s funny and has a lot of charisma as well.

We also have a vast majority of the supporting cast from the 2003 film returning here. We’ve got Mark Harmon as Tess’s husband, Chad Michael Murray as Anna’s first love, Christina Vidal Mitchell and Haley Hudson as Anna’s estranged high school friends/bandmates, Lucille Soong and Rosalind Chao as the owners of the Chinese restaurant that instigated the initial body-swap, and even Stephen Tobolowsky as Anna’s cranky teacher who is now terrorizing her daughter. Also, Ryan Malgarini who played Anna’s younger brother Harry, returns briefly as well. It seems like something of a miracle that Ganatra managed to get all of these people back together to reprise their roles. But you definitely get the impression all of these people really hold the first film close to their hearts, and were excited to reprise their roles.

The filmmaking here is pretty standard and workmanlike. There was nothing that really stood out to me about the score, cinematography or production design. It’s definitely a beautiful Los Angeles movie, and uses a lot of locations particularly well, but that’s about as far as it goes. It’s important to note this film was originally made for Disney+ and only became theatrical after it performed well in test screenings. And it definitely feels like a movie you could watch at home, but it’s also the kind of thing that’s a lot more fun in a movie theater with a crowd of people laughing and reacting to what’s going on. Between this and last week’s The Naked Gun, I think a strong argument is being made for comedies being theatrical releases again. I’ve said it before that comedies belong in theaters for the same reason horror movies belong in theaters. The communal experience really does add something that can’t be replicated at home on your couch.

Overall, I was very impressed by what Nisha Ganatra and Jordan Weiss accomplish with Freakier Friday. In an era where so many legacy sequels feel like crass, cynical cash grabs, Freakier Friday feels like it was made for the right reasons. At the very least it’s an opportunity for this cast, who obviously had a great time making the first, to work together again and it’s a pleasure to watch these actors back in their element. Freakier Friday is sharp, zippy and strange. It’s consistently funny, and warm and heartwarming. It works equally well as nostalgia bait, but also as a film that will have a lot to offer a new generation of viewers. It’s an ode to family but also offers a poignant message about what different generations have to learn from each other. Also, Freakier Friday implies the inevitability of Freakiest Friday and I’d see that movie.