Producers: Kristin Burr, Andrew Gunn and Jamie Lee Curtis   Director: Nisha Ganatra   Screenplay: Jordan Weiss   Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rosalind Chao, Chad Michael Murray, Mark Harmon, Christina Vidal Mitchell, Vanessa Bayer, Stephen Tobolowsky, X Mayo, Lucille Soong, Ryan Malgarini, Haley Hudson, Santina Muha and Jordan E. Cooper    Distributor: Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures

Grade: D

Confusing freneticism with fun, Nisha Ganatra’s sequel to the 2003 version of the repeatedly filmed body-swap comedy “Freaky Friday” doubles up on the swapping but reduces the number of laughs to near nil.  It’s not so much “Freakier” as “Franticker.”  And the sad thing is that “Freakier Friday” might have worked, or at least been tolerable, had Jordan Weiss’s script been cleverer and Ganatra’s directing more disciplined.

In any event, as Weiss and Ganatra have it, Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan), the teen musician of the original, is now the widowed mom of Harper (Julia Butters), a surf-loving, rebellious high school student.  Anna’s given up her own music career and is now serving as manager and helpmate to international singing sensation Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan).  (Editor Eleanor Infante inserts footage of the old Capitol Records building to emphasize the plot’s music cred, which is itself a kiss of death for any movie about the business.)  Ella is at present distraught over being dumped by her boyfriend, who’s had the bad grace to write a song about the breakup. 

Which helps to explain, perhaps, why Anna’s a bit slow on the uptake regarding Harper’s ongoing feud with her chem lab partner Lily Davies (Sophia Hammons), a snooty Brit expatriate who thinks herself a model of fashion sense.  Anna’s intrusive mother Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis), who’s just started a podcast about relationships (rather late in the day, one might note) steps in to help, but that doesn’t prevent a lab accident that pretty much destroys the classroom (comically, of course).

In the aftermath Anna and Lily’s father Eric (Manny Jacinto), a widower and a chef who’s come to L.A. to open a new restaurant and give his daughter space to get over her mother’s death, are called before Principal Waldman (X Mayo).  They immediately hit it off and get engaged, much to the consternation of their daughters, who loathe the thought of becoming sisters and either moving back to London (as Lily wants) or staying in California (Harper’s desire).  Their animosity toward one another explodes at a campus bake sale they turn into a food fight, in which poor Waldman, screaming like a banshee, gets a pie in the face.  (Isn’t it time it wasn’t okay to cast imposing black women in such mortifying roles?)  The girls are sent to detention, where they must deal with Mr. Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky, another returnee, and looking very old; he does, however, have one of the few funny lines when he explains why he’s still around by admitting that the teachers’ pension fund invested in crypto).  But they unite in the hope of breaking up their parents’ engagement.

Then comes the expected switcheroo, here engineered at an engagement party by a goofy fortune teller/barista/and much more (Vanessa Bayer, straining for laughs that never come).  Anna and Harper swap bodies, as do Tess and Lily; but the girls’ attempt to prevent the upcoming nuptials persists, even as all four try to figure out how to reverse the switch while getting what they want.

From this point “Freakier Friday” devolves into a succession of sketches, most desperately unfunny, like one where Tess/Lily takes a sports car for a joy ride or another where Harper/Anna tries to bungle an interview with an immigration official (Santina Muha, as hyper as Bayer).  But the worst idea was to drag Jake (Chad Michael Murray, returning as well) back into the fray.  Resurrecting his interest in Tess after so many years—especially as she’s married to Ryan (Mark Harmon, looking even worse for wear than Tobolowsky and practically invisible except for a truly embarrassing sequence in which he’s paired with a terrified Tess/Lily in a pickleball match)—is more creepy than freaky.

One could go on and on about the chaotic randomness of what goes on in the movie.  Toss in a weird dance sequence or slapstick surfing lesson!  Have Curtis indulge in another pratfall!  Stage a PR stunt or performance with Ella that proves that production designer Kay Lee and costumer Natalie O’Brien haven’t a clue about how to either mimic or satirize today’s music scene.  And, of course, arrange things so that after all the hullabaloo everyone undergoes a change of heart that reverses the swap and leads not just to familial harmony but a chance for Anna to take to the stage again, this time with Harper on guitar.  Infante threads all this together as best she can, but the effort is unavailing.

Curtis, whose lack of subtlety has always been a hallmark of her persona, is especially uninhibited here, and the result is not pleasant to behold.  Lohan is more restrained, and so more ingratiating, and both Butters and Hammons are pleasant enough when the script allows them to be; Jacinto is fine as a guy who, quite frankly, is too nice to be true (a quality that apparently attracts Coleman women, since Harmon’s Ryan shares it).  Murray does what he can with a part that requires him to act like a low-rent version of Brad Pitt, not an enviable task.  Other than in Ramakrishnan’s concert scenes, Lee’s work is fine, but O’Brien contrives some really garish dresses for the party scenes, especially for Curtis; Matthew Clarke’s cinematography is bright, sometimes blindingly so, while Amie Doherty’s score tries to bulldoze you into a good humor but fails.

The 2003 version of “Freaky Friday” might not have been the best of the body-swap movies that were a thing for a time, but it was one of the most popular, judging by, if nothing else, the number of remakes.  Its fans deserve better than this sorry sequel, though perhaps many of them will be blind to its defects, at least for a while, out of sheer determination to have a good time no matter what.

Producer: Brendan Devane   Director: Brendan Devane   Screenplay: Brendan Devane   Cast: Marc Hills, Rachel Finninger, Nicholas Baroudi, Gabe Greenspan, Christina Kirkman, Jolene Kay, Michael Chen, Christian Howard, Elise Greene, Wayne Charles Baker, Scott Bennett, Adrian Ballinger, Jocelyn Hudon, David Clennon, Kyle Gass, Alex Honnold, Brette Harrington, Hazel Findlay, Kevin Caliber, Ashley Undercuffler, Yanni Walker, Benjamin Rawls and William Fichtner   Distributor: Blue Harbor Entertainment

Grade: D

The sound you’re likely to be hearing by the time Brendan Devane’s horror movie, about a malevolent force attacking a group of rock climbers, reaches its big finale is that of your own laughter, or perhaps of your palm striking your forehead.  Devane claims that his goal was to create a nail-biting mixture of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and “Free Solo,” the remarkable documentary about Alex Honnold.  A charitable way of putting it is that he’s failed.

Honnold (along with some other notables of the sport) has a cameo in “The Sound,” proving that he’s no actor.  But then none of the professionals in the cast are appreciably better, including veteran William Fichtner, who has a couple of flat scenes as Conner, the father of Sean (Marc Hills), one of the climbers chosen by Kurt (David Clennon) to join the team he’s assembling to ascend the formation known as the Forbidden Wall.  A site in British Columbia sacred to the tribe of indigenous people led by Chief Guyustees (Wayne Charles Baker), it’s been closed to climbers since a disastrous expedition in 1959.  One of the climbers was Conner’s father, so he’s understandably concerned about his son scaling the wall that cost his father his life.  But Sean jumps at the invitation, so Conner reluctantly accepts his decision.

From the beginning we know something mysterious is going on here.  A prologue has shown us Sean’s grandfather (Adrian Ballinger) desperately trying to descend from the summit in 1959, and a shadowy agency man in Washington (Yanni Walker) talking about the expedition’s failure.  The tribe’s agreement to reopen the wall for a single climb after sixty-three years might be explained by renewed pressure from Washington, where another government guy (Kevin Caliber), apparently inhabiting the same closet-sized office as his counterpart did in 1959 (and apparently using the same rotary phone!), is shown overseeing things.  And when Sean gets to the site, Guyustees warns him about tribal legends concerning a sinister force at the wall’s summit that governments are concerned about; it is his mission, the Chief says, to complete his grandfather’s effort to seal it away forever.  To do that, he will have to embrace “the quiet” and resist the force’s ability to invade his mind and bend it to its will. 

As the climb begins, it quickly becomes apparent that the tribal legends are true.  Almost immediately problems begin to infect the communications trailer overseen by Kristen (Rachel Finninger) and the radio controller (Gabe Greenspan, intended to provide comic relief but merely annoying, though a Zoom conversation he has with an old expert played with laid-back disinterest by Kyle Gass is funny, in a deadpan way).  Strange things begin to afflict the six initial climbers, operating in groups of two; some are affected by strange voices in their heads (cue montages of their distorted faces as they struggle to set the messages aside), while others act as though they’re possessed, crawling about the rock wall like spiders before falling to their deaths.  Replacements are sent up to rescue the stranded or locate bodies.

But through it all, team leader Colton (Nicholas Baroudi) refuses to turn back, insisting that the climb continue despite the mounting casualties.  Eventually he and a few other survivors reach the summit, where glowing circles of animation—sub-rudimentary special effects if ever such existed—indicate the force within a prominent rock.  Sean will have to prove his mettle and complete his grandfather’s mission to prevent the force from escaping and doing untold damage to humanity.  But he’ll have some help, including a couple of indigenous warriors, presumably spectral figures, who abruptly spring out of nowhere to do battle against the malignant entity.

Sean survives, of course, and returns home to talk to Conner about the experience.  “It’s a long story, and it’s kind of crazy,” he says, and truer words were never spoken.  The movie lumbers along for nearly two hours, and the plot makes very little sense; the laughably inept special effects only accentuate the poverty-row nature of the production. 

As modest compensation there is some fine cinematography on display in the climbing scenes, which Ryan Galvan, shooting on actual rock walls and well as a simulacrum built on set, captures to nice effect.  But his camerawork in other sequences is simply dull, and not helped by the lethargic editing of Alex Russek, the chintzy production design by Nancy Foster (the fake-looking boulders on the summit are really unconscionable, even when draped in darkness), and the groaning synth score by James Iha of The Smashing Pumpkins.  One appreciates that the cast had to be chosen for their climbing ability as well as acting talent, but that’s really no excuse for the bland, often amateurish work of Hills, Finninger, Baroudi, Greenspan, Baker and their colleagues Christina Kirkman, Jolene Kay, Michael Chen, Christian Howard, Elise Greene, Scott Bennett and Jocelyn Hudon.  Of course, they all have to deal with dialogue by Devane that sounds like it was written by some AI apparatus as well as his lackadaisical direction.

One can forgive the flaws in a low-budget horror movie if it’s imaginative enough to make up for them.  “The Sound” isn’t.