FALLING FOR CHRISTMAS. Lindsay Lohan returns
Although Christmas is still a month and a half away, its craziest lovers can already start preparing for the time. They will get into the holiday mood with Netflix’s Falling for Christmas, starring Lindsay Lohan. This is her first major film role in more than a decade.
For today’s 20- and 30-somethings, Lindsay Lohan is a symbol of their childhood and teenage years. She was the biggest child star in Hollywood of the early 2000s. Her acting career began with the family film The Parent Trap (1998) by Nancy Meyers, where she playes two sisters separated years before and trying to get their parents back together. She later played a dissolute rich teenager in Get a Clue (2002), and swapped bodies with Jamie Lee Curtis, her movie mother, in Freaky Friday (2003). In 2004, she starred in the iconic Mean Girls alongside Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried. Success in her youth, unfortunately, did not guarantee Lohan a place in the front row of the film industry – as an adult actress, she was unable to develop an interesting acting portfolio.
“The Lohanaissance is here!”. With these kinds of slogans, Netflix is promoting a production featuring the actress, combining her name with the word “renaissance” – announcing the great return of the once-beloved young star. You can be sure that Lindsay Lohan will stay with us for a while yet – she has just signed a contract with Netflix for more films.
In Falling for Christmas, Lindsay Lohan plays the role of Sierra Belmont, a wealthy heiress to a hotel fortune with a good heart, although, as befits a rich woman, a bit detached from reality. Her father Beauregard (Jack Wagner) wants to make his daughter part of the hotel business and offers her the position of “vice president for atmosphere.” However, Sierra wants to go her own way, and her influencer boyfriend Tad (George Young) suggests she rock her social media. In order to take good photos, they go skiing in a remote mountain area. Tad seizes the opportunity to propose to his beloved at the top of the mountain, but moments later a gale breaks and the girl falls down the slope. The unconscious Sierra is found by Jake (Chord Overstreet), a widower and single father of the lovely Ava (Olivia Perez), owner of a small hotel in town. On the same day, her father refuses to support his business. The case becomes even more complicated when it turns out that Sierra doesn’t know who she is. Nor does she remember anything that happened before the accident.
Falling for Christmas is the most festive of holiday films – a polished and refined product, made up of all the clichés associated with the sub-genre. There is hot chocolate and there are cookies, there is a good-natured Santa Claus, a quaint town decorated with lights, a fire in the fireplace, Christmas sweaters and a love plot. Everyone is helpful and welcoming, and the film carries a classic message about the magic of Christmas and the power of love. It’s a film so sweet, candy-colored and exaggerated that it makes you sick. Except that Janeen Damian’s film is perfectly aware of that. At no point does Falling for Christmas try to pretend that it’s anything more than a holiday feel-good movie, and it has no ambition to claim anything a level higher. That’s one of the two reasons why the film is so good to watch. The other is Lindsay Lohan.
Falling for Christmas would have been a completely shticky, predictable film if it weren’t for her. Lohan has screen charisma and excels at physical comedy. She is the film’s main strength and its biggest surprise. Falling for Christmas is an objectively average film, but one endowed with warmth and charm that lends itself to the viewer. An enjoyable guilty pleasure for the holiday season.
Michalina Peruga