Lindsay Lohan is attempting to bring the festive cheer early this year with a Christmas rom-com filled with ski resorts, gingerbread houses, and snowglobes. However, the excitement of getting to watch the former child star in a feature-length romantic comedy about the holidays is dulled by the sub-par writing.
Sierra Belmont (Lohan) is the daughter of Beauregard Belmont (Jack Wagner), a rich businessman and the owner of Belmont ski resorts; and the partner of Tad (George Young), a top social media influencer. When offered the position of Vice President of Atmosphere (it is not a real job) by her father, Sierra is thrown into a dilemma that stems from her wanting to find an identity that is not linked to her father. Soon, an engagement on the ski slopes goes wrong and Sierra suffers a terrible fall followed by amnesia.
Falling for Christmas
She is rescued by Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet of Glee fame), a widowed bed-and-breakfast hotel owner living with his daughter in a town. Their establishment is falling apart and needs investments in order to be saved. As Sierra is trying to recover her memory, she is lapped up in performing chores at Jake’s resort.
Following the path of the conventional lore of a Christmas rom-com, Sierra and Jake steal swooning glances while trying to make beds, cook pancakes, and do laundry, eventually falling in love (in four days). The hook of reconciling her new identity with her past life, once her memory comes back, sounds interesting but our hopes are dampened by the ill-written character arc of Sierra. We never really get to understand Sierra as a person, making it hard to observe and understand her transformation. The idea of Sierra finding her identity, while performing chores that are categorised as traditionally-feminine, rubs the wrong way.
While the genre of Christmas rom-com demands us to absolve the films of all logical fallacies, this movie fails to even deliver on the stereotypes and caricatures employed by the writers as almost all of them feel sluggish and disingenuous, and the dialogues are no help either.
Chord as Jake comes across as forceful and bland, and is no match to Lindsay Lohan’s screen presence, making an already boring rom-com worse. While George Young is good at playing the part of a ‘colourful’ and entitled social media influencer, the confusing treatment given to his character makes it hard to appreciate his antics.
However, the biggest flaw of the movie is that throughout the one hour thirty-three minutes, we are made aware that Sierra is being played by Lindsay Lohan and this stardom of hers begins to suffocate us.
Falling for Christmas is currently streaming on Netflix
