Falling for Christmas, Netflix's foray into peppermint-flavored romance, is about as nice as you would expect. This is to say that it is fine, much like the Hallmark holiday films it imitates: it hits its beats, has a few musical moments, and assembles a love narrative that seems plausible through some competent acting. Even if the pacing might use some improvement, I really enjoyed seeing the film, largely because of Lindsay Lohan, the erstwhile Mean Girl who is simultaneously admired and despised in Hollywood.
I adore Lindsay Lohan as a millennial who grew up in the target audience for her movies. She appeared in some of the movies that helped shape my early life. In Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, she snuck out to have a wild night in New York City, and I'll never forget it (2004). Or when she appeared in Freaky Friday as a very angsty adolescent girl who wanted to be a famous rock musician (2003). Today's bands-to-watch are performing the songs she sang in the movie Freaky Friday because it was so legendary (both on screen and in the album). In the romantic comedy Just My Luck, she played a PR representative who had essentially never faced difficulty (2006). Of course, her legendary climb to high school popularity in Mean Girls will always be with us (2004).
My on-screen co-star Lindsay Lohan was developing just like I was. She portrayed the procedure as fanciful, exciting, and filled with once-in-a-million encounters like meeting your favourite pop celebrity or long-lost twin. It's no secret that life didn't do her much in return. Lohan grew older and began to experience the problems we've come to expect from a hugely famous kid actor. She has experienced numerous falls from grace, all of which have been excessively documented by intrusive paparazzi and later by her own more bizarre social media presence.
Though you look at her IMDB, you'll see that despite all of this personal turmoil, she has constantly received work, even if the calibre of that work has varied. I'm not the first to assert that Lindsay Lohan is skilled in her field. But this brand-new Netflix holiday film makes me wonder whether Hollywood doesn't really believe in her enough to support her in showing it. Currently 36 years old, Lindsay Lohan is nearly two decades older than she was in 2004, when she tortured Regina George, and in 2005, when she recklessly tried to establish her worth as the youngest race car driver in her family. And now, in the year of our Lord 2022, Netflix continues to cast Lohan in a well-known role that makes her seem less naive.
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Lindsay Lohan portrays Sierra Belmont in the movie Falling for Christmas. Sierra is a hotel heiress who has never worked a day in her life, can't make a bed or flip a pancake, and is generally harsh and contemptuous of anyone who attempts to take care of her. (A stereotype of an urbanite, ala Hallmark Christmas.) That is, until she has a skiing accident and hits her head, losing her memory, and is saved by the more modest small-towner Jake Russell (Glee's Chord Overstreet), who runs a basic BnB. (Yes, it belongs to that category.) Russell houses her while she recovers and looks for herself once more. The two inevitably fall in love. In keeping with this cliche, Sierra also learns how to make a bed, do the laundry, and develop into a polite, down-to-earth grownup.
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I'm sorry, but Lindsay has been doing this exact same thing ever since I was too little to be washing my own laundry. Despite her efforts to broaden her acting range, Lohan's characters in all of the aforementioned films—and even some I haven't yet mentioned—start out the same: a bratish adolescent who matures and discovers how to respect her elders, take care of herself, and fall in love with some handsome Average White GuyTM while doing it. And now that she is an adult, is she simply acting in the same way?
There is no denying Lindsay Lohan's performance in Falling for Christmas. But I'd like to watch a rom-com with Lindsay, age 36. Give me a Lindsay who moans about the cost of rent in New York City while sipping enormous glasses of wine with her twice-divorced girlfriends. I want to see Lindsay struggle with love not just because she is messy but also because life is messy and Tinder is terrible, starting off as a self-sufficient adult. I want her to work a job she's overly committed to that doesn't place her in the one percent. Where are the autumnal leaves? Where is the point where the guy recognises that she is superior than everyone he has ever dated, in addition to the fact that he loves her? Please tell me where the obnoxious but considerate boss is. She should attend the Meg Ryan rom-com academy, in my opinion. Why can't Lohan join me as I mature?
