It’s no surprise the Internet is celebrating the comeback of Lindsay Lohan. With a tremendous filmography reaching back almost 25 years, with such beloved childhood and adolescent classics including The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Mean Girls, and Just My Luck, Lohan’s fans have been hungry for her to headline movies again. To see Lindsay Lohan acting is to remember the feeling of un-jaded, adolescent joy her works have evoked.
After over a decade since Lohan’s last rom-com, she proves that she still has her wholly unique charisma in the new Netflix rom-com, Falling for Christmas, which she both starred in and executive produced.
Lohan portrays Sierra Belmont, a spoiled hotel heiress with little to no direction or sense of greater purpose in her life. With an entire team of people to help her perform even the most menial tasks (including a stylist and Lohan-family-cameo portrayed by Lindsay’s sister Aliana), Sierra is perfectly positioned to be not-so-gently knocked off her privileged pedestal and find love somewhere unexpected.
Enter Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet), a kind-hearted widower who owns the modest, family-run North Star Lodge, which is struggling to stay in business with the rising popularity of luxury ski resorts like the one Sierra’s father owns.
When Sierra accepts a marriage proposal from her wealthy influencer boyfriend Tad Fairchild (portrayed by George Young, best known as Detective Kekoa Shaw in James Wan’s Malignant), a gust of wind knocks Sierra off the top of a mountain to fall head-first into a tree. With Sierra’s only noteworthy injury being a case of amnesia, the stage is set for Jake to swoop in and offer her a place to stay at his lodge.
With Lohan at the helm of this project, it’s no wonder that it fully embraces the opportunity for her to perform physical comedy. Whether it’s her falling back in fear of a raccoon, failing to crack eggs properly while cooking breakfast, wrestling to put a sheet on a bed, or accidentally knocking over several pairs of skis, Lohan takes every opportunity to make her audience laugh.
Though Sierra’s connection to Jake starts off slower than one might have expected to see in a light-hearted holiday rom-com, the slow burn eventually builds to something truly sweet. As a widower, Jake is reluctant to give his heart to someone new, but any true rom-com fan already knows he and Sierra will eventually realize they are better together than apart.
Lohan is a veteran of the collaborative process of bringing engaging love stories to the screen. Her expertise in the genre is apparent in her long-awaited comeback. She and Overstreet deliver all the cute flirting, prolonged eye contact, and cozy yearning that is fundamental for a holiday rom-com. The physical comedy and Sierra’s journey of self-discovery round out the story to leave the viewer satisfied on multiple fronts.
Welcome back, Lindsay Lohan. We missed you dearly.
Falling for Christmas is streaming now on Netflix.
For an even more spoiler-filled discussion of Falling for Christmas, watch my video review here: