| Falling for Christmas is Netflix’s first Christmas movie of the season, and it’s also their first entry into the Lindsay Lohan renaissance (with the romantic comedy Irish Wish expected in 2023). It starts as an immature comedy about a spoiled brat acting like a spoiled brat, but the charm eventually wins over as it becomes a sweet comedy about a girl who doesn’t know who she is. | | 2022
Directed by: Janeen Damian
Screenplay by: Jeff Bonnett, Ron Oliver
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Chord Overstreet
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I’m always wary of amnesia movies since it’s just not a common occurrence in every-day life and yet it’s a very common plot device in films of all genres. Here amnesia is given the holiday romantic comedy treatment. Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan) is the daughter of rich hotel magnate, owner of a big fancy ski resort. She’s given a fake job title to give her a fake sense of purpose as she lives her life in social media, and she’s also engaged to an influencer spoiled brat. But when their engagement at the top of a mountain goes sideways, she ends up at the bottom of the mountain passed out, and he winds up lost in the forest.
She wakes up in the hospital unaware of who she is and nothing to help the authorities track her down identity. The owner of the resort Jake (Chord Overstreet, most famous for Glee) agrees to take her in until either her memory comes back or her family identifies her as a missing person.
The comedy at the beginning is very immature, and is not helped by the mountain scenes which are very clearly green-screened. But the bulk of the movie is Sierra and Jake falling in love with each other as she tries to do normal things to trigger her memory, but of course her life as a billionaire heiress is anything but normal to the rest of society. Lindsay Lohan is very cute and charming as the sweet and well-intentioned Sierra trying to do things which she should know, but just has no history of cooking or cleaning to fall back on.
The resort which Jake runs is a small, quaint idealistic resort in a small town, but is financially failing. That’s nothing new for this type of story, but it’s also so generic that it’s impossible to place the fictional town in any real location. They never even mention which mountain range these resorts are in. A lot about this movie is a very generic, middle of the road rom-com.
It’s not overly funny, and it’s not overly romantic either, but it is sweet and cute as Falling for Christmas wins out with its charms.
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