{"id":129162,"date":"2025-08-08T13:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/129162\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T13:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:36:13","slug":"ranking-the-ethical-quandaries-in-freaky-friday-from-least-to-most-disturbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/129162\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranking the Ethical Quandaries in \u2018Freaky Friday,\u2019 From Least to Most Disturbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Movies<\/a>Movies<\/a>\u2018Freakier Friday\u2019 is here, which means it\u2019s the perfect time to look back on how truly unsettling this whole conceit is\"\"Disney\/Getty Images\/Ringer illustration\"\"<\/a>By Helena Hunt<\/a>Aug. 8, 12:35 pm UTC \u2022 13 min<\/p>\n

Freaky a classic among 2000s kids who yearned for a spicy teen movie but were only allowed to watch Disney Channel, is finally getting its much-longed-for sequel, Freakier Friday. The original movie granted sheltered millennials a cornucopia of gifts: some pop-punk bangers<\/a> that gestured at rebellion, an enduring fascination with Jamie Lee Curtis, Chad Michael Murray on a motorcycle, our first brush with the White Stripes and the Hives, the word senescence, and inside-out shirts as peak fashion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whether the sequel can reach the heights of these cultural touchstones remains to be seen, but there\u2019s one thing it will absolutely offer a new generation of viewers: a totally fresh set of ethical dilemmas. The original asked a question no other teen has ventured to answer: What should a teenager in the throes of angst do after switching bodies with her 50-something mom who\u2019s about to get married to the human equivalent of a Men\u2019s Wearhouse suit? Freaky Friday does not shy away from the depths and dangers of this conceit, sending daughter Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) and mother Tess Coleman (Curtis) to the outer limits of empathy after they swap lives: Together and apart, they explore age-inappropriate romance, impersonate each other at work and school (with potentially dire consequences), and complicate their already fragile family dynamic.<\/p>\n

Freakier Friday, true to its title, aims to compound these ethical quandaries by wrangling Anna\u2019s daughter and future stepdaughter into the body-swapping mix. And its arrival gives us a very good reason to reminisce on and rank the moral messes of the first Lohan-Curtis joint, from least to most disturbing\/illegal\/just kinda fucked. Perhaps herein lies a valuable lesson for whenever you get body swapped with someone in your family: Maybe just take a sick day instead of taking over, and potentially ruining, the life of your loved one?<\/p>\n

17. Breaking the Rules of the Wango Tango Battle of the Bands Audition<\/p>\n

Frankly, I don\u2019t care if Tess, in Anna\u2019s body, broke the sacrosanct rules of the Wango Tango battle of the bands and guitar-synced her way to victory (or at least the next round of competition). Curtis\u2019s guitar solo rips:<\/p>\n

Luckily, unlike in Singin\u2019 in the Rain<\/a>, there\u2019s no grand reveal of Anna and Tess\u2019s subterfuge, and Anna\u2019s band, Pink Slip<\/a>, lives on to rock another day. (And they\u2019re back to rocking in 2025!<\/a>)<\/p>\n

16. Ordering $10,000 Worth of Halibut\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fine, Tess does this before trading bodies with Anna, and sure, she\u2019s using her own money to order halibut for her own wedding. But the insatiable maw of the wedding-industrial complex\u2014and the people who\u2019d shovel $10,000 worth of halibut into that maw\u2014is its own ethical problem. The salmon option was so much cheaper! And I can almost guarantee that Tess\u2019s wedding guests would like it better, because who\u2019s really that into halibut? Perhaps Anna-as-Tess made the right ethical choice when she canceled on the caterer; even if it left her mom high and dry before the wedding, it also left Tess $10,000 richer.<\/p>\n

15. Canceling Your Mom\u2019s Root Canal\u00a0<\/p>\n

It turns out that Anna and Tess could get their own bodies back as soon as they did something selfless for each other. And if you were ever a teenager with a mom and\/or a mother with a teenage daughter, you\u2019ll probably understand why it took a while for that to happen. But Anna could have gotten her selfless act out of the way a lot earlier by just sitting through her mom\u2019s root canal. (Why Tess had a root canal scheduled for the day before her wedding is anyone\u2019s guess\u2014maybe she really did want to get out of marrying her fianc\u00e9, Ryan.) Instead, Anna cancels the appointment the day of, probably also landing her mom with a late cancellation fee\u2014not to mention a rotting tooth that she\u2019ll have to deal with for her whole honeymoon.<\/p>\n

14. Going on a Shopping Spree With Your Mom\u2019s Platinum Amex<\/p>\n

You know when you\u2019re 11, and you buy a birthday gift for your parent, but you\u2019re obviously using their money, so it just ends up being a gift that they paid for? That\u2019s a generous interpretation of Anna-as-Tess\u2019s Santa Monica shopping spree, when she revamps her mom\u2019s drab wardrobe in a montage that rivals anything in Pretty Woman. Anna\u2019s selfishness in buying designer clothes her mom wouldn\u2019t even like notwithstanding, she does give us the movie\u2019s most iconic look: Curtis\u2019s (to die for<\/a>) Diane von Furstenberg silk dress, heeled boots, Y2K-chic sunnies, and, of course, a diamond stud for that new cartilage piercing. Sure, you could say that Anna just wanted to inject some pizzazz into her mom\u2019s wardrobe. But the shopping spree really just seems like a jab at her mom\u2019s bland attire (and personality)\u2014and maybe a way for Anna to get back at Tess for taking away her bedroom door and all her fun.<\/p>\n

13. Getting Body Alterations Right Before the Wedding Day<\/p>\n

This could be lumped in with the ethically dubious shopping spree above, but clothes are returnable\u2014a brand-new hole in your ear isn\u2019t. Anna\u2019s yen for piercings verges on the compulsive: First, she got her own belly button pierced without her mom\u2019s permission (and since that\u2019s definitely illegal, she probably did it herself\u2014a Lindsay Lohan signature<\/a>). Now she\u2019s getting her mom\u2019s cartilage pierced, again without permission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anna also managed to squeeze in a haircut to show off her (mom\u2019s) new piercing. Curtis\u2019s Freaky Friday pixie is an icon in its own right, but any bride will tell you not to do anything drastic with your hair right before your big day. No wonder Ryan was getting worried that Tess had cold feet; there\u2019s no greater sign of a midlife crisis than a pixie cut. (That and riding on the back of a motorcycle with Chad Michael Murray.)<\/p>\n

12. Jeopardizing Your Daughter\u2019s Friendships and Denying Her a Future as the Next Tom DeLonge<\/p>\n

The big conflict at the center of Freaky Friday is whether Anna\u2019s band will get to try out for KIIS-FM\u2019s Wango Tango, the first step in any pop-punk group\u2019s path to greatness. Pre-swap, Tess says that Anna can\u2019t play in the audition\u2014pretty understandably, since it\u2019s at the same time as Tess\u2019s rehearsal dinner. But eventually, we find out that the House of Blues, where the auditions are, is only half a block away from the rehearsal dinner. Because of a recent commercial about James Blunt<\/a>, I know that Google existed in 2003, and Tess could have figured that out. It really makes you wonder: Does she want to ruin Anna\u2019s life<\/a>?<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the audition Tess is seemingly trying to ruin: Almost as soon as she takes over Anna\u2019s body, she\u2019s slut-shaming Anna\u2019s bandmates, telling them to pull down their crop tops, and bragging about her superior knowledge of Hamlet\u2014basically, she starts acting like their mom, which is a bad way to keep your (daughter\u2019s) friends around. She also leaves them in the dust to make up with Anna\u2019s bully, Stacey Hinkhouse, whom she clearly thinks is better friend material just because she wears pastel cardigans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

11. Bullying Your Little Brother in the Guise of Your Mother<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing more infuriating than when your sibling acts like your mom\u2014telling you what to do and patting you on your head like you\u2019re a little baby. But what might be even worse for Anna\u2019s little brother, Harry (Ryan Malgarini), is when the person he thinks is his mom starts acting like his sister\u2014calling him a punk, trying to make him walk 20 blocks to school through a gauntlet of bullies, and telling his teacher that he should be held back because he\u2019s such a shrimp. As an older sibling, I know how hard it can be to find a scrap of sympathy for your little brother or sister. But Anna could have pulled it together and not made Harry think that his mom had turned on him, leading to decades of relationship trauma, an anxious attachment style, and probably life as a single, broke loser. Hopefully Anna\u2019s bullying didn\u2019t make a lasting impression, but as we know, the kid\u2019s not very tough.<\/p>\n

10. Sabotaging the Future of Teenage Bully Stacey Hinkhouse<\/p>\n

Tess-as-Anna spends part of her school day trying to repair the broken relationship between Anna and her childhood friend Stacey Hinkhouse (played by Julie Gonzalo, who had a good run playing bullies in Chad Michael Murray movies<\/a>). Obviously, Tess should have known that this is a dynamic as old as time: In a teen movie<\/a>, no middle school friendship lasts<\/a> into high school<\/a>. When Stacey makes it seem like Tess is cheating on a test, though, she finally sees Stacey\u2019s true colors. Tess ends up taking a very Election-style form of revenge against erasing the answers Stacey put on the test and penciling in \u201cI\u2019m stupid!\u201d instead. Grown therapist Tess probably should have taken the high road and not tried to sabotage a teenager\u2019s future, however heinous that teenager might be. Especially because the only teen whose life might get ruined by this is Anna, whom multiple teachers witnessed making her way to the filing room to doctor the test.<\/p>\n

9. Calling Your Daughter a \u201cLittle Harlot\u201d and a \u201cStripper\u201d<\/p>\n

This one has nothing to do with Tess and Anna\u2019s body swap\u2014sometimes Tess just sucks as a mom, even when she\u2019s in her own body!\u00a0<\/p>\n

8. Taking Your Daughter\u2019s Big Test (and Then Cheating on It)\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said it once, and I\u2019ll say it again: The plot of this movie, and nearly every sticky ethical situation Tess and Anna find themselves in, would have been rendered null and void if they\u2019d just taken a sick day. If Anna-as-Tess had just called the school, she probably could have gotten her mom out of taking this test. Instead, Tess teaches her daughter the wrong lesson about cheating and takes the test for her\u2014not that it probably did Anna much good.<\/p>\n

Perhaps a valuable lesson was learned, though: Parents should never underestimate the Byzantine complexity of high school math.<\/p>\n

7. Shaming Your Body (That Your Daughter Is Now Inhabiting) and Not Letting Her Eat Some French Fries in Peace<\/p>\n

The early 2000s were a different place (that doesn\u2019t seem too different from 2025, come to think of it), and no one back in the day blinked an eye when Tess-as-Anna snatched a carton of McDonald\u2019s fries out of her daughter\u2019s (her own?) hands and told her they\u2019d go straight to her thighs if she kept eating them. Toxic thoughts about your body are passed down from mother to daughter like a (not so precious) heirloom\u2014and that\u2019s even more true when your daughter is literally inside your body.<\/p>\n

6. Cruising the Streets of L.A. Without a Driver\u2019s License<\/p>\n

Look, if Freaky Friday took place somewhere with less traffic, I wouldn\u2019t have a problem with Anna driving without a license! She has a permit, even if she can\u2019t find it anywhere, and she clearly knows the basic mechanics of driving. But watching her careen in and out of traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway<\/a> fills me with dread. I may not have thought much of Anna\u2019s hair-raising maneuvers when I watched Freaky Friday as a kid, but now I have driven in L.A.\u2014and it\u2019s the stuff of nightmares, even if you have your driver\u2019s license. That Tess blithely sits beside her, going to town on those french fries while Anna nearly causes a 10-car pileup, is perhaps the least believable part of this movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

5. Violating HIPAA<\/p>\n

Again, I\u2019m pretty sure therapists are allowed to take sick days! Instead, before setting her loose on her patients, Tess just tells Anna, \u201cYou are in no way to give anyone any advice. That would be unethical!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But isn\u2019t it also unethical to sit in on a therapy session without the patient\u2019s consent? Or, you know, to pretend to be a therapist at all, even if you\u2019re just listening to your patients\u2019 (sometimes incomprehensible) complaints and asking, \u201cHow do you feel about that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Would you send a teenager into an operating room instead of a surgeon? Probably not! Anna should also not be trusted with the delicate feelings and confessions of Tess\u2019s patients\u2014some of whom will probably be looking for a new therapist after they catch Anna-as-Tess on TV.<\/p>\n

4. Making Chad Michael Murray Fall in Love With You(r Mom)<\/p>\n

Freaky Friday makes it clear that Anna has barely ever spoken to her crush, Jake\u2014played by Chad Michael Murray in his teen heartthrob prime. So why did she choose this Friday of all Fridays, when she\u2019s wearing her mom\u2019s body, to go on a romantic date with him?! I guess it would be hard to resist bonding over early-2000s rock bands and \u201c… Baby One More Time\u201d with Chad Michael Murray in a global village coffeehouse<\/a> and even harder to say no to taking a ride on the back of his Ducati. When you\u2019re a teenager living in your mom\u2019s body, everything just feels so urgent; if you don\u2019t savor these moments with Chad Michael Murray right now, when will you ever get to? You might never get to ride his motorcycle again!<\/p>\n

What Anna might not have anticipated is that her mom is a certified babe (and certainly not the crypt keeper<\/a>). Chad Michael Murray falls for Anna\u2019s soul and, apparently, her mom\u2019s body. The power of bootleg Hives CDs compels him to follow Anna-as-Tess to her house, the rehearsal dinner, and House of Blues, and he rebuffs Tess-as-Anna\u2019s attempts to distract him with a sneakily age-inappropriate kiss. Sure, he needs to learn the lesson that \u201cno means no,\u201d and you should probably leave an adult woman alone when she\u2019s about to get married to someone else. But Anna could have done her part by waiting to flirt with Jake until she was back in her own age-appropriate, not-engaged-to-Ryan body.\u00a0<\/p>\n

3. Treating Chinese Characters With a Heavy Dose of Racism<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty clear that Anna and Tess weren\u2019t the only ones facing some ethical dilemmas and making the wrong choices\u2014the movie\u2019s creators also made a hash of their treatment of the movie\u2019s Chinese characters. Pei-Pei (Rosalind Chao) and her mom (who doesn\u2019t get a name, and is played by Lucille Soong) run House Chiang, where Anna and Tess receive their fateful body-swapping fortune cookies. Both Pei-Pei and her mom come laden with a number of stereotypes about Chinese people: They have access to some kind of mystical power right out of Big Trouble in Little China, Tess calls their body-swapping powers \u201cAsian voodoo,\u201d they speak in broken English (or no English at all) and have broad accents, and have broad accents, and gongs go off when Anna and Tess leave their restaurant.<\/p>\n

Pei-Pei and her mom both swoop in to save white people from the problems they\u2019ve created for themselves (from catering snafus to familial conflicts), but they don\u2019t get much of a story line of their own. Freakier Friday seems to have learned from the mistakes of the original and shifted the magic powers onto Vanessa Bayer, although Pei-Pei will also be making an appearance in the sequel\u2014hopefully not soundtracked by a gong this time.<\/p>\n

2. Almost Going Through With a Marriage to Your Mom\u2019s Fianc\u00e9<\/p>\n

At the rehearsal dinner, Tess finally realizes that she and Anna won\u2019t be swapping back before her wedding and tells her daughter that they should postpone it. Finally, someone\u2019s thinking straight! But then \u2026 Anna goes ahead and gives a speech that indicates she is very much planning on going through with the wedding anyway. Sure, it\u2019s because Anna accepts Ryan and gives the wedding her blessing that she and Tess finally do switch back (and not a moment too soon). But did she stop to think about what would happen if she went through with the wedding?!\u00a0<\/p>\n

1. Giving Anna and Tess the Fortune Cookies in the First Place<\/p>\n

The inciting incident of Freaky Friday has to top this list. Taking license with the fate and selfhood of two people you barely know is surely the greatest ethical gamble of a movie full of them. Pei-Pei\u2019s mom is playing god in that Chinese restaurant, and maybe she should learn to fear what she\u2019s created<\/a>. So what if Pei-Pei\u2019s mom was right and her magic did solve all of Tess and Anna\u2019s problems? If she hadn\u2019t been right and Anna and Tess couldn\u2019t resolve their issues within 24 hours, what would have happened? Let\u2019s see: Anna would have had to call off that wedding eventually, leaving her family broken once again. She probably would have driven her mom\u2019s practice into the ground (although she could have had a second career as a TV personality); she also probably would have left her family in bankruptcy because of her shopping habits. Anna\u2019s band would have dissolved without their lead guitarist, and you can forget all about the Wango Tango battle of the bands. Tess probably would have gotten kicked out of school, and she definitely would have lost all of her (daughter\u2019s) friends. And who knows how Harry would have ended up after being parented by a sister who despises him?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sure, Tess-as-Anna and Anna-as-Tess each bear some responsibility for the problems they caused after swapping bodies. But one could argue that a teen simply should have never inhabited her mom\u2019s body, or vice versa, no matter how many lessons about the power of mother-daughter love they got out of it.\u00a0
The existence of a Freakier Friday, though, implies that someone is still out there using their body-swapping powers for ill. Maybe Tess and Anna learned from the messes they made the first time around, but chances are the next generation will need to make the same mistakes before getting their bodies back. And so the cycle goes: a new Freaky Friday for every generation, to teach them the lessons their parents learned decades ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Helena Hunt<\/p>\n

<\/a>Helena Hunt is a copy editor for The Ringer who loves TV and sometimes writes about it. She lives in San Diego, but no, she doesn\u2019t surf.