I Watched 3 Lindsay Lohan Netflix Movies—2 Are Incredible and 1...Yikes

One of the pluses of Christmas is getting a break in your schedule to spend time with friends and family…but sometimes it’s difficult to know how best to choose entertainment that will be enjoyable for everyone. Also, I’m always looking for a frothy something I can watch with one eye on the screen and the other focused on wrapping presents. So in the midst of the Lohanaissance, I thought I’d have a little Lindsay Lohan film festival—and came away multiple shades of shocked and delighted by the varying qualities of flicks. (One of which I’m nominating for my best family Christmas movies list.) Here’s my review of her 2024 Christmas film, Our Little Secret, her 2024 romcom set in Europe entitled Irish Wish and her 2022 Christmas Netflix movie, Falling for Christmas.

This movie is so fun! I first heard about it via Instagram creator @fatcarriebradshaw, who recommended the colorful characters and Lindsay Lohan’s acting. The flick has a wackadoo setup (a couple who dated in college but bitterly broke up find themselves reunited when they turn out to be dating siblings who have each brought them home for the holidays) and a strong supporting cast (hello, Kristin Chenoweth as Lohan’s meddlesome prospective mother-in-law and Ian Harding from Pretty Little Liars as her ex).

The couple agree to keep their ex-romance secret, and help each other achieve their respective romantic goals: Harding’s character agrees to assist Lohan in making cranky Chenoweth like her; in exchange, Lohan’s character punches up a real estate development proposal that will make or break Harding’s future.

The negging going on between the central couple, with a holiday backdrop, reminds me of one of my favorite romantic Christmas movies, The Family Stone, with Lohan’s college bf supplying the sassy quips that Luke Wilson did in that movie. And he and Lohan don’t try too hard to rekindle their college romance, so the film doesn’t ask its viewers to suspend too much disbelief (unlike the two other Lohan movies on this list, which dip dangerously into magical realism). And this movie has a sentimental call-back gift for longtime Lohan watchers—Tim Meadows plays a family friend, while all I would remember was his role as long-suffering Principal Duvall in Mean Girls.

After the energizing romp of Our Little Secret, I was amped to watch Lohan’s other new release, a romantic comedy set amid lush Irish expanses including a castle and the Cliffs of Moher. I needn’t have quickened my pulse, because Irish Wish is a disappointment. “Selling Sunset has higher production values than this movie,” quipped my boyfriend. He’s right—it is garishly overlit (Lohan. BTW, looks amazing, but full direct sun when filming in HD does our girl no favors). Also, it has a major script problem in heavily relying on mysticism as its narrative engine.

Book editor Lohan (I could bother to use her character’s name, Maddie, but TBH, I was always just thinking of her as Lindsay) has a long-simmering crush on her star writer. He’s a typically clueless headcase creative type, keeps her solidly in the friend zone, and suddenly, Lohan finds herself in Ireland as a bridesmaid at his wedding to her best friend. It looks like Lohan is sorry-out-of-love until she sits on a stone bench that a mysterious passerby woman says is a wishing chair…and wishes she, instead of her best friend, was getting married to her writer. Then, magically she falls asleep and wakes up in a bizarro world where she is indeed betrothed to her writer.

But is she happy? Does she keep running into that cute photographer who keeps guilting her about why she’s not writing books of her own? Does anyone ever explain why a strange woman keeps popping up all over town creating trouble? The movie constantly beggared belief, which is hard to do in a romcom, a genre that immediately demands viewers just go with it. I found this film hard to enjoy except for when I started counting how many times “Lohan” appeared in the credits (Lindsay is an executive producer, her brother is a supporting character and a female family member composed the theme song), as well as how many plaid outfits she wore (I lost count at five).

I had low hopes for this, Lohan’s 2022 Netflix Christmas movie that marked her return to film after a three-year hiatus. After all, it only has a 62 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. This is the story of a megabucks hotel heiress whose pampered existence leaves her longing for a life of purpose, only to have her future jeopardized when she falls down a mountain while her influencer boyfriend is proposing to her. By the time she’s discovered by a local innkeeper at the bottom of the mountain, she’s suffering from amnesia. Yikes, this can’t possibly be good, can it? Yes, yes it can, thanks to the sincerity of Lohan’s performance learning to help out around the inn while her presence helps the innkeeper, played by a floppy haired Chord Overstreet, regain emotional and financial stability after losing his wife, mom to an adorable 8-year-old daughter—two years prior. (LiLo has great chemistry with Overstreet.)

Even though Falling for Christmas has an unfortunate subplot involving a street vendor Santa who grants wishes, as well as that whole amnesia business, the family dynamic (including a wise grandma at the inn and a handsome hotel titan father at Lohan’s family resort) is touching, the snowy scenery makes me feel cozy (lots of it was filmed in and around Utah’s glitzy Stein Eriksen Lodge) and the played-for-laughs influencer boyfriend makes me chuckle. Too, scenes of Lohan falling down-the-hill and tumbling over a recliner show her gift for physical comedy, a gift she hasn’t lost since her Mean Girl days. I’m sold! No wonder this was a Netflix hit when it came out in 2022—I’m set to tune in to LiLo for a happy ending for the hols forever.