‘It’s all smoke and mirrors, baby...’
Lindsay Lohan has been an easy target over the years so I’m not going to dunk on her here. I will say that Mean Girls is genuinely one of my favourite films and she is genuinely fantastic in it. The intervening years have not been kind to Lohan professionally, and so Falling for Christmas represents a comeback of sorts. She probably shouldn’t have bothered…
Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan) can’t decide what she wants to do with her life despite being like 40-years-old or something. As the heiress to a hotel magnate, she has the luxury of flirting with being an ‘influencer’ if she so pleases. Her father Beauregard (Jack Wagner) wants her to work for the hotel, while her despicable boyfriend Tad (George Young) cares only about his Instagram followers. Following a preposterous accident that should have seen both Sierra and Tad stone dead, the former loses her memory and ends up in the arms of Jake (Chord Overstreet – a ludicrous name), a local heartthrob and George Bailey ripoff.
The only reason anyone is watching this, of course, is for Lohan. Unfortunately, while she isn’t actually bad, she isn’t good either. It doesn’t help that Jeff Bonnett and Ron Oliver’s script is dogshit, and Janeen Damian’s direction pedestrian. Now, I’m a film geek of that there is no doubt, but I’m not really a film snob so much. I love the work of Michael Bay and Kevin Smith. I love Cameron Crowe even at his most sentimental. But this? This is an irredeemable piece of shit. While the set designers do a good job in nailing the general Christmas aesthetic, the performances are flat, the plot rote and predictable and no amount of goodwill still in the bank for Lindsay Lohan is going to change that.
By the end of this movie, I couldn’t care less about any of the characters. I’ve never felt less emotionally attached to anything in my life. I struggled to even muster up any anger. If you’re thinking of watching this for some cheesy Christmas fun, or even if you’re looking for some so-bad-it’s-good trash, this is not the film for you. This isn’t a film for anyone really. It’s also potentially the least funny ‘comedy’ ever made. My face has never been so still in my life. In fact, I was frowning through most of it. Lohan has fucking tricked us. Now let us never hear from her again.