I almost listed this as a Bargain Bin Review, but would that be fair? It just came out, and it’s not like it was quietly released on some obscure platform. It’s out on Netflix and getting a surprising amount of media attention.
But this is Netflix making a Hallmark Christmas movie. Starring Lindsay Lohan. Sounds like Christmas is coming early for the Internet…
Directed by Janeen Damian, 2022, 95 minutes, Rated TV-PG
And the award for best Comedy/Horror
Hallmark Christmas Movie goes to…
Meet Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan). We know she’s a spoiled rich girl by the remote-controlled curtains in her suite, the hotel-appointed entourage and the slo-mo entrances she’s granted when she enters a room. Daddy (Jack Wagner) run a hotel empire and is eager to have his little girl join him in the family business as “Vice President of Atmosphere” which, to Sierra’s credit, even she realizes is a b.s. position. She also has a very famous, very over-the-top influencer boyfriend named Tad. Indeed, it appears she has it all.
Tad snowmobiles Sierra to the tippy top of a secluded mountain summit and proposes. She’s flustered, and when the giant ring Tad just gave her slips off her finger Sierra falls off the side of the mountain, tumbling ass over end and eventually slamming head-first into a tree. Looney Tunes-style. All that’s missing are the cartoon birds flying around her head.
No worries, she’s fine. In fact, Sierra is promptly rescued by Jake Russell (Glee’s Chord Overstreet), who runs the small, family-owned lodge in town. Jake is Every Hallmark Christmas Movie Love Interest Ever: he’s a widow with a perpetual five o’clock shadow, an entire wardrobe of flannel shirts and an adorable little muppet who says things like, “Haven’t you heard, Dad? Christmas is the time of miracles!”
At the hospital, Sierra is diagnosed with a mild concussion and soap opera-grade amnesia. She’s so high maintenance that “Sarah” is promptly released from the hospital to stay at Jake’s lodge. I can’t imagine that’s a standard hospital polic—
Wait, is this a Christmas-themed remake of Overboard?
HOLYCRAPITIS! We get a number of montages of Sarah/Sierra attempting and failing to do such simple tasks as make a bed, start a load of laundry and flip pancakes. Her ineptitude is stunning. Along the way, Sarah/Sierra bond with the little muppet and shares longing looks with Jake.
If you’re wondering why no one shows up looking for Sierra, she’s wondering the same thing. Unfortunately, Daddy is away on business and she told the entourage that she was to be undisturbed before heading up the mountain. As for Tad, he’s having his own ordeal: after being lost in the woods for hours (“What kind of crap forest doesn’t have a cell tower!”), he ends up in a tiny ice cabin with a mountain man whose truck craps out so they have to hike a few days to reach civilization. Think Tad will show up at a really inopportune time and pull Sierra way from Jake in front of the entire town?
It may be hypocritical for me to drag R.I.P.D. last week for being formulaic, but in the case of Falling for Christmas, being formulaic is a feature, not a bug. Yes, everything plays out the way you’d expect – but cartoonishly so. The town can’t just have a tree-lighting, it must be overseen by the mayor with the entire town in attendance, a full band, and fireworks. Sarah/Sierra is extra inept, the muppet is extra earnest, and Tad is extra… extra. Even bit characters get a chance to be absurd (“Is this thing safe?” one man asks about a horse-drawn sleigh, as if it were a rickety unicycle with a jet engine). It’d be tempting to say you’re laughing at the characters, but it all plays so tongue-in-cheek that I have to believe everyone was in on the joke.
The possible exception might be Santa. Yes, THE Santa Clause is heavily implied to be in attendance, largely to do some possibly magical finger-wiggling and to mug the camera like a madman:
I may have yelped in terror at one point.
Anyway, Falling for Christmas is idiotic, cheesy and completely ridiculous. I loved it.
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