’Tis the season to celebrate the return of Lindsay Lohan. As announced last year, Lohan stars in Netflix’s latest holiday romantic comedy, Falling for Christmas, which debuts November 10. Vanessa Hudgens who?
In Falling for Christmas, a newly engaged hotel heiress named Sierra Belmont (Lohan) has a skiing accident that results in amnesia. Unable to remember who she is, Sierra is taken in by a local lodge owner named Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet). “Fancy fish in small holiday pond” antics ensue.
LiLo has had a busy couple of years. After bopping around the world, Lohan launched her impeccably named podcast, The Lohdown, in April. Then in July, she announced her marriage to Bader Shammas, who works in finance. Now, she has gifted us all a blissful 95 minutes of seasonally saccharine shenanigans.
Here is (almost) every thought I had while watching Falling for Christmas. I would give a spoiler warning, but if you’ve seen a Christmas rom-com before, you know exactly what’s going to happen.
- Off the bat, we are opening with one of my least favorite Christmas songs, lyrically speaking. “Everybody’s waiting for the man with the bag” sounds perverted and no one can convince me otherwise. I am fun to watch movies with!!
- Lindsay is here! I know her character’s name is Sierra, but she is always Lindsay to me. Lindsay is being spoon-fed caviar, and her hotel-magnate father has offered her the job title “vice-president of atmosphere.” This implies the existence of a president of atmosphere. I will only think about this for the rest of the movie.
- Outfits, outfits! Lindsay is wearing one of those sheer, fur-trimmed robes. She looks chic and bitchy — the ideal fashion combo.
- Lindsay’s boyfriend (and later fiancé) is an influencer (lol) named Tad, which sounds too much like Dad. A metaphor?? Also, Tad tells Lindsay he wants to take a few “us-ies,” as in selfies with the two of them. No one tells him this is simply called a photograph.
- Lindsay’s character says her social accounts were hacked by “that girl.” We are never given clarification on who “that girl” is. Thus, I am going to assume this is a reference to the 2012 incident in which Lohan’s Twitter account tweeted a joke referencing Hitler. She later tweeted, “My Twitter was hacked, please ignore the last tweet.” This is a perfect thing to post anytime you make an egregious tweet.
- A cameo by Ali Lohan! She plays one of Lindsay’s stylists.
- Greetings, Chord Overstreet! A.k.a. Fish Lips a.k.a. Trouty Mouth a.k.a. Sam Evans. Seeing his face gives me Glee PTSD. (PTS-Glee? Help!) Here, his character’s name is Jake Russell, which, in many ways, is the same name as Sam Evans.
- Oh no, is skiing culture a big part of this movie? I just want to watch Lindsay Lohan dress up in different robes.
- Okay, good. We’re back to Lindsay, who has changed into a red pantsuit, big black hat, oversize glasses, and emerald-green pumps. She is wearing “Valenyagi.” I had to turn on subtitles to see how they spelled the name of this fake brand, presumably a portmanteau of Valentino and Balenciaga?
- AH, Trouty Mouth spilled hot chocolate on LiLo’s Valenyagi! Kill him!!
- Tad just said, “Trending!” out loud. I love what writers think influencers talk like. It’s like when adults try to write for high-schoolers and they end up with characters who say things like, “Well, my lit fam, I’ll have to TTYL, and that’s on period!”
- Trouty Mouth, who owns a quaint local ski lodge, has a spooky old doll in his desk drawer. I know it’s a tree topper with some yet-to-be-explained emotional significance, but that is an immediate ick for me.
- Dead mom check! We’ve learned Sierra’s mom passed away when she was young. There must be at least one (1) deceased parent in a romantic comedy or holiday movie. How else does one build an emotional bond with a character if not through the trauma of losing a parent? Anyway, Lindsay is in a pink-and-black ski suit, and her lip color matches perfectly.
- Trouty Mouth and Lindsay’s Hotel Daddy have the same floppy, blond fuckboy hair. Another metaphor??
- Lindsay and Tad have driven to the top of a snowy peak. I thought they were going to Thelma & Louise themselves off of this mountain, but alas, he is simply proposing. (A mountaintop proposal to the heiress of a hotel chain seems, ahem, familiar.) The ring is a square, yellow diamond that is the size of a Brazil nut.
- Speaking of nuts, a man who looks like Santa is selling hot nuts by the local lodge. It is actually illegal to make a Christmas rom-com and not have a Santa-adjacent character.
- Uh-oh, Tad and Lindsay are falling off of the mountain! The green-screen effects are very obvious! Wow, they are falling for a very long time. Sad that the main characters die 20 minutes into this movie :(
- Just kidding! Lindsay is found by helpful stranger Trouty Mouth. She wakes up in a hospital and can’t remember anything about her identity. However, she does have the sense memory of being rich and requests room service? Movie-amnesia logic will be studied by scientists for generations to come.
-Tad, who seems to have retained his memory, has been rescued by a grizzled ice-fisherman who resides in a murder shed. He is in an entirely different movie than Lindsay Lohan.
- The nurses have released Lindsay to Trouty Mouth just because he says he has a lodge? HIPAA violation!
-Lindsay meets Trouty Mouth’s young daughter, Avy, who waltzes right into this stranger’s room. People need to be more afraid of people they don’t know! She, too, has a dead mom. We learn Trouty Mouth’s wife passed away almost two years ago, which is several decades when it comes to emotional processing in movie time. Earlier, we saw Avy make a “Christmas wish” for something secret. Hmmm, I wonder what that could be. Anyway, now she’s holding hands with Lindsay Lohan as they walk down to have breakfast with Trouty Mouth.
-Time for one of my favorite movie tropes: uh-oh, character can’t cook! Lindsay’s Sierra both is very rich and has amnesia, which means she cannot figure out how to crack an egg. She chucks it point-blank at the frying pan. I would watch Lindsay Lohan pretend to cook for 90 minutes.
- If you’re wondering why no one has reported Lindsay and Tad missing … knock it off! You are not here for the plot! You are here to watch a series of outfit changes and to see if Lindsay Lohan can still deliver lines. (She can!)
- Trouty Mouth is doing all the lodge jobs: manager, house cleaner, man who sweeps, pancake chef. This is because their small-town lodge is being run out of business by … Airbnb? Ah yes, the classic “ski lodge versus Airbnb” conflict. As my editor Brooke Marine said, this movie should have been called The Last Resort.
- Wait, Lindsay Lohan fell down a mountain yesterday, and now they’re making her do chores at the lodge? Let her rest! This woman is probably concussed!! Also, she’s fallen at least two more times since that initial mountain incident. That is not quirkily clumsy; it is a sign of head trauma.
- I hope Tad and the grizzled mountain man fall in love.
- Now Lindsay is talking to a horse and shedding actual tears. A master of her craft.
- Lindsay Lohan is 36, which seems right. Chord Overstreet is 33, which is younger than I expected. But George Young, who plays Tad, is 42?! How? Where?
- Oops, I was looking at pictures of George Young, and a lot of time has passed in the movie. Lindsay’s character is learning to be a normal girl! She can make her bed and even a pancake!
- Trouty Mouth asks Lindsay, “Do you think you’ll remember any of this when you get your memory back?” Does anyone know how amnesia works?
- LiLo is tearing up again! An artiste!
- Tad Fairchild (I just remembered his last name is Fairchild) is eating canned beans with Ralph (I just remembered grizzly fisherman’s name). They are still stuck in the snowy woods, and I can’t get enough of these bean boys!
- Lindsay helped organize a fundraiser for Trouty Mouth’s lodge even after he was like, Nooo, I’m too macho and hate money. At the event, people are just walking up to Trouty Mouth and handing him checks? No one involved in this movie has ever been to a fundraiser.
- Lindsay! Is tearing up! Again!!!
- Welp, Tad and Fisherman Ralph made it home. Then, Tad and Hotel Daddy found Lindsay hanging out at Trouty Mouth’s lodge, and now she has to go back to being rich :(
- Hell yeah, time for a montage of Lindsay and Trouty Mouth’s last 80 minutes, in case we just forgot.
- Great news: The lodge is saved because Lindsay talked about it on TV once! Hooray! Unfortunately, North Star Lodge does not have an online-booking system, and they are writing down all the reservations by hand in a little notebook.
- Trouty Mouth has confessed his love to Lindsay (obviously) and rich Hotel Daddy is going to help finance the lodge (duh). Tad and Ralph didn’t end up together, but Tad does leave with Terry, one of the guys who works at the hotel. Yay! I hope they eat beans in the woods together, too.
- We conclude this journey with an obligatory blooper reel and Lindsay Lohan’s cover of “Jingle Bell Rock.” The full song is on Instagram, but you should pay your tithe and watch this movie — if only to see the part where Lindsay hurls an egg at a frying pan.