Lindsay Lohan’s Falling for Christmas is a witless and tired holiday romance

This isn’t the anticipated comeback Lindsay Lohan would have wanted. Her Netflix movie is witless and tired.

If you needed a starker contrast in how different Lindsay Lohan’s latest movie is from her most famous one, you need only to look to Jingle Bell Rock.

The Christmas ditty appears in both Falling for Christmas and Mean Girls, but everything that surrounds those few bars are worlds apart.

It doesn’t serve Falling for Christmas to be reminded that Lohan used to command the screen in films that were worthy of a proper release, not just another hackneyed streaming movie with the word Christmas in the title.

Falling for Christmas is notable only for Lohan’s involvement – her first lead role in some years. Although at this point, her thespian ambitions are more bemusing curiosity than drawing power.

And for single-white-femaling Overboard, but without the charm or chemistry of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Falling for Christmas is Lindsay Lohan’s first major lead role in almost a decade. Picture: Scott Everett White/Netflix

Lohan plays Sierra, the privileged daughter of a glitzy ski resort owner. Her father offers her the job of “vice president of atmosphere” and even she admits that’s not a real job.

She has half a dozen minders to take care of her champagne, caviar and bed-making needs, and a designer wardrobe Imelda Marcos would have envied. Her boyfriend Tad (George Young) is a self-involved social media influencer.

Then a mishap during an Instagrammable moment results in Sierra tumbling down the slopes and into an amnesiac state. Jake (Chord Overstreet), a young widowed dad running a failing lodge business, finds her.

Since she can’t remember her name or identity, Sierra ends up in the care of Jake and his family. Cue montage of her attempts at cleaning the toilet or doing laundry.

Sierra and Jake are incompatible – she doesn’t know how to wrangle a fitted sheet on to a mattress and he’s not as good at wrapping gifts as he thinks he is – but, as the format demands, they will make googly eyes at each other.

Not so much with the chemistry. Picture: Scott Everett White/Netflix

Falling for Christmas is a witless, tiresome and stale movie. It would be a disaster if it wasn’t so boring. Disaster would be an upgrade because at least it would be entertaining.

But if you’re looking for something with which to play Christmas movie bingo, Falling for Christmas will provide the goods. See how quickly you can fill your card.

Mistletoe? Of course there is. Also, Christmas biscuits, ugly jumpers and a snow globe. What about a cute, wide-eyed kid, a bearded old man who may or may not be Santa and anodyne holiday music? Mark it off.

Before it’s all done, there will be a wish fulfilled and even an authority figure declaring, “It’s Christmas!” after letting someone off the hook for an infraction.

It’s all here, which will serve those looking only for saccharine familiarity tied up with a big red bow.

Christmas romances rarely bother trying. Picture: Scott Everett White/Netflix

Maybe that’s all a Christmas romance needs to be. So few of them manage to distinguish themselves from the throng, each mediocre effort about as zingy as a bedraggled shopper battling the Westfield carpark on December 22.

As long as it ticks the yuletide boxes with no care for fundamentals such as scripting, characterisation, performance, originality or visual flair, then Falling for Christmas isn’t so offensive.

Rating: 2/5

Falling for Christmas is streaming now on Netflix

Originally published as Lindsay Lohan’s Falling for Christmas is a witless and tired holiday romance