Photo Courtesy of The New York Times
On Thursday, Nov. 10, the new Lindsay Lohan movie “Falling for Christmas” was released on Netflix. This movie is Lohan’s return to acting after a long break from the profession.
The movie follows Lohan’s character Sierra Belmont, a spoiled hotel heiress who develops amnesia during a skiing accident right after she gets engaged to social media influencer Tad (George Young). Sierra is found after her accident by local businessman Jake (Chord Overstreet), his daughter Avy (Olivia Monet Perez) and his mother (Alejandra Flores).
The movie follows Jake and Sierra’s love story as she regains her memory and, with it, finds a new sense of self. At least, that seems to be the premise the creators were going for. However, this movie has a lot of very obvious, annoying problems that are hard to overlook.
While the movie itself is shot in a very beautiful location with great shots of the snowy mountains of Utah, that does not make up for the poor writing and poor acting.
The best performance in the movie is probably that of the horse, Balthazar. Balthazar pulls the sleigh Jake rides, and he does a very good job at it.
Sierra is irritating at best, and her character growth falls pretty flat as it seems to come out of nowhere and happen way too fast. Jake is boring, and there is nothing to his character, with his only redeeming quality being that he is far less annoying than Tad. Avy and her grandmother are probably the most interesting and least aggravating characters in the movie.
The relationship Avy has with Jake is cute at times, but the writing is too cliché to enjoy. It was hard to make it through to the end because each plot point was predictable and poorly executed. It follows the same pattern as most cheesy holiday movies do without adding anything original.
The jokes fall flat almost every time, and the only saving grace is that the two lead actors have at least a good amount of chemistry. But again, that requires looking past the rushed plot, the terrible writing and the lackluster acting.
It is very cliché, but not in the good way where the storytelling evokes butterflies and the audience roots for the main couple despite knowing they will end up together no matter what. It is the kind of cliché that makes someone’s nose twitch in disgust or check their phone so often that by the time they look up the movie is already over, and they don’t really care that they missed the ending.
If someone is looking for an easy Christmas movie to throw on in the background while baking Christmas cookies, this is the movie for them. If someone is looking for a movie with substance and entertainment value, this is not the movie for them. Nothing about the movie is memorable, and there is no rewatch value at all.
While it is nice to see Lindsay Lohan back on the big screen looking healthy and happy, that is not enough to make this a good movie. However, this will not be the audience’s last chance to see Lohan as she is returning to the screen in 2023 for the movie “Irish Wish.”
