There’s a famous line from Sunset Boulevard said by Joe Gillis (William Holden) that goes, “Sometimes it’s interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be. This promised to go the limit.” Needless to say, that’s the only clear motivation for watching the utterly uninspired in title (in addition to content) Falling For Christmas. And while most Netflix movies (imitating Hallmark ones) of this nature would fly under the radar, Falling For Christmas is meant to be some “special,” “big deal” event (even though Christmas With You starring Freddie Prinze Jr. probably should have gotten more publicity instead). All because none other than Lindsay Lohan is starring in it for what is meant to be her umpteenth comeback. And, just like every other “comeback” she’s attempted (Labor Pains, a 2012 SNL hosting gig, the Oprah-backed docuseries, Lindsay, an ill-advised MTV reality show called Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club, etc.), this one also seeks to prove why some people should just keep “living their best life” in Dubai.
Alas, Lindsay clearly needs the money to keep affording those nips and tucks, those fillers and drillers. And so, she engaged in a little something called Lies We Tell Ourselves. Namely, when it comes to shaking our ass for the cash. Maybe that’s how she managed to attempt billing the movie as follows: “I feel like what we don’t have enough of right now is romantic comedies. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s a really fun, uplifting romantic comedy. And it’s actually really funny.” Notice how insistent she is with these repetitive lines, in what amounts to one of those “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” instances. She then added, “When I read the script and when we started to film it, I didn’t realize how physically funny we were going to be. There’s a lot of physical comedy in it, which I really liked doing—it’s one of my favorite things to do, which I haven’t got to in a while.” But no, just because she has red hair does not mean she’s got the Lucille Ball knack for comedy, slapstick or otherwise.
One could say the first “act” of physical “comedy” is set against a horrible CGI-generated backdrop on a snowy mountain where Lohan’s character, Sierra Belmont, is taken by her “influencer” boyfriend (who looks, to be frank, a bit too old to influence much in an ageist society like ours), Tad Fairchild (George Young). According to him, this is the place to be because “one of the top off-trail skiers in the country geotagged this secluded spot.” Such a line being part of Tad’s “persona,” one that makes us wonder how anybody, even a vapid rich puta, could stand to be around him, let alone agree to an engagement proposal. Then again, maybe Tad reminded Lindsay in some way of one of her many douche-y exes (whether “steady” or fling), from Harry Morton to Stavros Niarchos to Egor Tarabasov, and she just ran with the inspiration for getting into the mindset of a character that would stay with someone so insufferable.
But before all of this, Falling For Christmas already opens in a manner both totally random and generic, for the first scene is a brief few seconds of some ski lifts soundtracked by cornball music before we see an overhead shot of Sierra in a sleep mask. It’s the quintessential “You’re Seeing A Pampered Rich Girl” shot. Or, at least, someone who wants to be perceived that way (see also: Holly Golightly and Jenna Rink). We’re soon informed that Sierra is at a hotel when the phone rings and she gets a wake-up call from the concierge. To further give “insight” into her rich bitch personality (that Lohan doesn’t play up nearly enough) she hangs up the phone while the woman is still talking to her. We soon learn that Sierra spends a lot of her life in hotels—specifically, Belmont hotels. For she’s the heiress to that name. And yes, if you’re thinking it sounds like shade at Paris Hilton, one wouldn’t be surprised… for that feud is, as Katy Perry would say, never really over.
More snapshots of the hotel’s “poshness” (shown via the low budget’s rather unglamorous people getting out of expensive cars) are meant to give us a glimpse into Sierra’s “good life,” even though it looks like a communistic (exterior-wise) Holiday Inn-styled “summit resort”—not even a Hilton. And maybe the only real reason Lohan agreed to sign on to this script was to recreate the relationship she actually wanted with her own troubled, absentee father. To that point, Sierra exhibits the Electra complex-oriented dynamic that rich girls have with their rich fathers (see also: Donald and Ivanka). Which is why Sierra can’t be candid with him about not wanting to become the “Vice President of Atmosphere” for the hotel, lest she disappoints Daddy.
What’s more, Sierra complains to Tad, “He flew me all the way up here in his private jet for Christmas. I don’t wanna hurt his feelings.” At the same time, she laments, “When people look at me, all they see is the spoiled daughter of Beauregard Belmont, the hotel magnate. And I’m not spoiled!” This timed so that she can be spoon-fed caviar and given champagne to sip on before being asked, “Dress or slacks?” by her temporary stylist, Bianca (played by Lohan’s sister, Aliana—which proves she’s taken up the mantle for Britney back when she used to try to make Jamie Lynn’s “career” happen).
All of this is leading up to the most insane moment of the movie, in that it entirely negates the plot even being necessary to continue on past the discovery of Sierra unconscious near a tree. That moment being when the movie’s true romantic leading man, Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet, whose already existing tie to Lohan is that she cameo’d on Glee in 2012), appears at the Belmont Resort. On a side note, if Jake is so beloved and famous in that town, surely Sierra would have encountered him at some point, even despite her sheltered existence. In any case, after presenting Beauregard (Jack Wagner) with a proposal for upgrading his “lesser” a.ka. humbler North Star Lodge and asking if he might consider financing it (“making an investment,” if you will), then being promptly rejected, he runs quite literally into Sierra with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. Regardless of the fact that she’s wearing sunglasses and a big hat, it would be fairly difficult to not make the connection that it’s the same woman he discovers unconscious next to a tree soon after. Especially since he’s supposed to be so attentive and astute.
To viewers’ dismay, that isn’t really true. For after staring at her for a few minutes with the daub of bird shit-like whipped cream he’s spilled onto her “Valenyagi” suit, he seems to have some amnesia of his own later on. But sure, the audience can buy that he’s so blacked out in general over his North Star Lodge woes that maybe he just wasn’t paying attention to fairly obvious physical details. Plus, as a widower/single dad, his general pain could be fairly all-consuming.
His daughter, Avy (Olivia Perez), sees that pain, which is why she makes a “Christmas wish” near a holiday market vendor who “just so happens” to look like Santa (and yes, he’ll reappear many times throughout as a “guardian angel,” of sorts). This being only one of the infinite schlocky moments that Lohan chooses to omit in her mainstream promotion of the movie on outlets like Good Morning America and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Where the interviewers in question mostly preferred to bring up Mean Girls and talk of a Freaky Friday sequel because these are what remain Lohan’s sole claims to cinematic glory apart from The Parent Trap.
Other bids at promotion laughably centered on Lindsay looking back at some of her most “iconic” movie roles, which, due to scraping the bottom of the barrel, included her parts in ensemble cast movies such as A Prairie Home Companion, Bobby and Chapter 27. And yes, most would be hard-pressed to remember 1) what her character’s name is (the basic mark of a truly iconic movie character) and 2) what actually happens in any of these movies. Unfortunately for Lohan, gone are the days of her being “bankable” enough to star in features with actors like Meryl Streep or even Jared Leto. So here we are at Falling For Christmas.
A movie that demands of its audience, at every turn, not to stab their eyes and eardrums out, in addition to accepting that Sierra and Jake have fallen in love in four days and the former’s personality has improved just by learning to make a bed, do laundry and cook breakfast. And yet, this is something we can find more believable in Overboard, the film plot Falling For Christmas clearly wants to emulate. At least in that movie, however, screenwriter Leslie Dixon (who, funnily enough, previously worked with Lohan in that she wrote the script for Freaky Friday) had the decency to treat her viewer with some respect by showing the gradual development of the relationship between heiress-turned-amnesiac housewife Joanna Stayton (Goldie Hawn) and Dean Proffitt (Kurt Russell). The carpenter who takes advantage of Joanna’s memory lapse after she treats him like shit and doesn’t pay for the work he did on her closet because she wanted it crafted of cedar, not oak. Thus, when he sees her story on the news, he decides to do something that smacks of what Rand Gauthier might attempt (instead, Rand took revenge on an unpaid carpentry bill by stealing Pam and Tommy’s giant safe, containing their sex tape—proving that you should always pay the help what they’re owed).
Perhaps in a different genre tone, one not meant to be so Hallmark-y meets a dash of Lifetime, the movie could have actually been comedic, as opposed to desperately playing at being that way. Even so, the fact remains that Lohan’s one-note acting range—not her “legal troubles” related to drinking and drugging—are what have ultimately set her back all these years. Talking of that one-note acting range, let no one forget (including Lohan herself) that she “acted” in one of the worst movies ever made in history, Among the Shadows, which she conveniently does not mention in any of her “flashing back” to film roles past.
Yet, for whatever reason, Lohan persists in making a “comeback” every few years. One she’s allowed to attempt perhaps because no one can quite remember what the last thing she did was anyway. And to help people forget/excuse how bad Falling For Christmas is, someone clearly must have paid a writer off at Indiewire to create the title, “Lindsay Lohan’s ‘Falling for Christmas’ Is the ‘Citizen Kane’ of Netflix Christmas Movies.” While Lindsay decided to take that at face value and repost it as the only positive review of the movie, anyone who reads further will see that the sole correlation made between these two movies is that both have a snow globe and a sled in them (though it’s really a sleigh, not a sled in Falling For Christmas).
For those accustomed to the factory conveyor belt style of churned-out Netflix Christmas movies (again, stealing the Hallmark formula), Falling For Christmas is par for the course. But as yet another shitty movie in Lohan’s choppy filmography, it begs the question, why keep trying to return? Perhaps because, as Lindsay once self-referentially asked during the cameo she made in Glee’s third season, “Is there anything better than someone making a comeback?” The answer is yes, and that’s when someone makes a worthwhile comeback.
Genna Rivieccio
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