Posts Tagged ‘Lindsay Lohan’

Freakier Friday

Director: Nisha Ganatra

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julia Butters, Mark Harmon, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Chad Michael Murray

Running Time: 1 hour and 50 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10  

Disney so needed a hit after the drama of Snow White early in 2025. Thankfully, Late Night and The High Note director Nisha Ganatra works her magic on the Freaky Friday sequel aptly entitled Freakier Friday.

Twenty two years after the first personality swapping comedy hit cinemas back in 2003, the original cast is back including Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls, The Parent Trap, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen) as record producer Anna Colman opposite her screen mother Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis (Everything, Everywhere All At Once) playing Tess Colman along with Anna’s petulant daughter Harper Coleman played by Julia Butters (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Sophia Hammons as Harper soon to be step sister Lily Reyes.

When successful music producer Anna meets charming restaurant Guru Eric Reyes played by Filipino star Manny Jacinta, there is a wedding planned with one big problem. Both Anna’s daughter Harper and Eric’s stuck up British daughter Lily cannot stand each other to the point of becoming Frenemies.

After a bizarre visit to a dodgy palm reader, mother and daughter and step sister and granddaughter all swop personalities offering up some hilarious results along with Curtis playing a teenage version of herself and Julia Butters expertly playing a much older version of her character.

Lindsay Lohan takes on her daughter’s personality and behaves like a 17 year old while Harper tries to take charge of her mother’s career.

Intergenerational conflict reaches new heights as the evil versions of Harper and Lily decide to break up the impending marriage of Anna and Eric even roping in Anna’s hot ex-boyfriend Jake played once again by Chad Michael Murray (House of Wax) who was also in the original film.

Despite the garish antics, Freakier Friday doubles the plot twists and ensures that the bizarre yet funny storyline stays fresh in a 21^st century Los Angeles drenched in the Instagram age. Fortunately Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan manage to rekindle their original onscreen chemistry.

While the male characters have very little to do in a predominantly female centred film, Freakier Friday does hit all the right notes providing a fresh and vibrant comedy about intergenerational female relationships which are both clingy, complex and competitive. Fortunately director Nisha Ganatra has the knack of keeping this film light and breezy ensuring that even the serious moments are touched with a light poignancy which doesn’t drag down the dazzling tone of the film.

Good to see Lindsay Lohan back in action and Freakier Friday is a fun filled frothy comedy which definitely is better than the original film. Freakier Friday gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is lush and lightweight. Recommended viewing for some comic relief.

Mean Girls

Director: Samantha Jayne & Arturo Perez Jr

Cast: Angourie Rice, Renee Rapp, Tina Fey, Jaquel Spivey, Lindsay Lohan, Christopher Briney, Bebe Wood, Jon Hamm, Avantika, Auli’I Cravalho, Busy Philipps, Jenna Fischer, Tim Meadows, Ashley Park, Mahi Alam

Running Time: 1 hour 52 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Never mind Barbie, watch Mean Girls, it’s hilarious and fabulous. Directing duo Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr, artfully recreated the Mean Girls musical with a witty script by comedian and actress Tina Fey in the new 2024 reboot of the original 2004 film, Mean Girls which starred Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Lizzy Caplan.

Angourie Rice (Spider Man: No Way Home, The Beguiled, The Nice Guys) is brilliant as naïve but manipulative teenage girl Cady Heron who arrives at North Point High School in Chicago after being home schooled by her mother on the Kenyan plains. Cady has to navigate the treacherous backstabbing world of teenage popularity and acceptance as she first befriends Janis and Damian, wonderfully played by Auli’I Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey. Janis is exploring her sexuality while Damian is just too gay to function. Into the fray at the cafeteria, the original mean girl makes her grand entrance, Regina George, blonde haired with ample bosom and a matching attitude. Regina is the IT girl with her minions and has had countless boyfriends and rules the social world of teenage awkwardness with a glittering plasticity.

Superbly played by Renee Rapp, Regina George is the ultimate teen queen, the most popular girl in high school who attracts the attention of Cady Heron who also has her eye on the gorgeous boy sitting in front of her in calculus: Aaron Samuels played by Christopher Briney.

Mean Girls is part comedy and part musical, with lots of social media drenched dance numbers and some extremely funny moments including the drama at the Winter Musical and the increasingly hilarious missteps that Cady does to try and fit in, including having house parties, trying to kiss Aaron Samuels and arriving at a Halloween party as a blood drenched bride of Dracula, looking hideous.

Tina Fey’s script is brilliant, witty and toxic, but filled with some moral lessons about treating fellow girls properly and basically not being a competitive back stabber. Even the burn book gets a treatment and all hell breaks loose until Regina gets hit by a bus! Jaquel Spivey as the very camp Damian is over the top but absolutely necessary to the script and provides some hilarious laughs.

Mean Girls is raucous and gossipy, hilarious and frivolous but ultimately a funny film filled with lots of feel good musical numbers about teenagers trying to get a grip on their new world both socially and sexually, carving their own path away from any parental guidance and capturing the current media crazed Tik Tok, SnapChat phenomenon.

The screen tension between Renee Rapp and Angourie Rice is brittle and toxic, just the way it is meant to be when the new bright girl takes on The Plastics. Audiences should watch out for appearances by Lindsay Lohan as Mathletes Moderator, Jon Hamm as Coach Carr and Tim Meadows as the exasperated Mr Duvall, the high school principal.

Aimed at teenage girls and definitely their mothers, Mean Girls honours the original film while updating the social media entrenched social politics of 21^st century young adulthood in this new glittering and hyper-stylized version for the 2020’s.

Mean Girls gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is recommended for those that enjoyed the original film and also provides a glitzy showcase for the next generation of rising film stars. Recommended viewing for those that enjoy teen comedies.

The Canyons

Director: Paul Schrader

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Funk, Gus van Sant, Amanda Brooks, Tenille Houston

American Gigolo and Autofocus director Paul Schrader teams up with American Psycho writer Brett Easton Ellis in this Fringe psycho sexual thriller The Canyons starring Mean Girls star Lindsay Lohan, who surprisingly holds her own in a film about movies, manipulation and malevolence.

The Canyons is not Paul Schrader’s best work but nor is it meant to be. It’s a rather low budget fringe film about a group of aspiring actors and producers in the less glamourized side of Los Angeles.

Porn star turned film actor James Deen turns in a suitably impressive performance as Trust Fund film producer and sexually ambivalent Christian who is dating Tara. Both of whom live in an isolated house in the Canyons on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Tara is secretly having an affair with an aspiring actor Ryan played by Nolan Funk who is willing to go to any lengths to get a role especially with the mostly gay producers he is hired by.

It’s a sexy and dangerous menage-a-trois revolving Christian who has some serious daddy issues (he is forced to go and see a psychologist played by Drugstore Cowboy director, Gus Van Sant); Tara, the sunbathing ubiquitous Lindsay Lohan and Ryan who is hot property on the casting couch. Ryan is desperate to break into the low budget film world and due to financial constraints is easily manipulated by the wealthy and sociopathic Christian.

The fact that Tara and Christian are swingers also adds to some exceptionally explicit sex scenes with themselves and several anonymous strangers giving Schrader a chance to objectify the male body onscreen as opposed to the usual Hollywood norm of objectifying the female form. Schrader has done this before in American Gigolo in what was to become Richard Gere’s breakout role especially his infamous full frontal nude scene with the glamourous socialite played by Lauren Hutton.

Unfortunately the script by Easton Ellis is not as witty or incisive as his hit novel American Psycho about corporate greed in the late 1980’s in Manhattan.

The Canyons suffers from a lazy narrative populated by some lacklustre characters who all seem to be chasing after the elusive dream of Hollywood fame. Paul Schrader’s direction starts off promising with some opening shots of abandoned movie theatres in the more seedier parts of Los Angeles, signifying the death of cinema but soon loses momentum much like the narrative which is punctuated with gratuitous nudity and one especially violent murder.

The acting leaves much to be desired with possibly Lohan and Deen doing their best while Canadian actor  and Versace model Nolan Funk needs loads of thespian encouragement. Amanda Brooks and Tenille Houston also star as the other sex sirens.

The Canyons is a C grade sexual thriller which could have been so much more impressive had Schrader taken the film up to the level of his brilliant Washington social comedy The Walker. Recommended for those that like Lindsay Lohan, full frontal nudity and a deglamourized view of the City of Angels.