Room at the inn
The Netflix Christmas season is back, and as much as I would like to rejoice, 2022 is an astonishingly anemic year for the streaming service. In the past we have been treated with various entries in the Princess Switch and A Christmas Prince franchises along with variably high-concept one-offs like The Knight Before Christmas and A Castle for Christmas. But in 2022, only two of their offerings feel right, and both are coming out in early November.
However, there's no need to be a Grinch just yet, because their latest film, Falling for Christmas, is delivering on every level. That is, every level of a Netflix Christmas rom-com, which does not include "quality." The film follows spoiled hotel heiress Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan, whose film career Netflix is trying to rehabilitate with an adrenaline shot of Christmas cheer, just like they did with Vanessa Hudgens who is now kept in a cage in the attic next to the box of ornaments and garlands, to be trotted out every winter), who is resisting her father's (Jack Wagner) push to take a cushy corporate job and actively hates her relationship with social media influencer Tad (George Young).
Enter bed and breakfast owner Jake (Chord Overstreet). He is a single father whose daughter Avy (Olivia Perez) wishes he would find love. Naturally, Santa is serving roasted chestnuts nearby (unlike other stupid Christmas properties who are content to have a jolly man with a white beard help the characters out before disappearing, the film desperately wants you to notice that it's Santa, to the tune of a stomach-churning amount of flop-sweaty close-ups) and he grants the wish by sending some magic wind to push Sierra off the top of a mountain. Her fall is broken by her head, which leads to some Overboard style amnesia. During her recovery, she spends the week before Christmas with Jake and Avy, falls in love with the former, and learns just how important it is to be a nice, humble, charitable, Santa-fearing person.
There are only two reasons to watch Netflix Christmas rom-coms. The first is that you love the holiday and want to watch something completely anodyne that is the media equivalent of being wrapped in a cozy sweater while drinking eggnog and eating sugar cookies. The second is if you are someone like me, who has an insatiable capacity for squeezing out every mediocre cinematic dishrag in order to lap up whatever dribble of bad-good entertainment there is to be found within them.
If you are the former, congrats! Put on Falling for Christmas. Godspeed.
If you are the latter, Falling for Christmas unfortunately doesn't have the kind of dizzyingly ludicrous high concept that makes the best Netflix rom-coms shine. However, it is packed with some of my personal favorite tropes of these types of movies. For instance, if you forget for even a single second that the movie takes place over the Christmas holiday, I recommend closing this review and locating the nearest cognitive health professional. Every inch of every frame is decked out in full holiday regalia, including valet parking drop-off zones (a giant decorative pile of presents), headboards (garlands and lights), and even a toilet tank (a mini Christmas tree).
The movie also displays a wildly incomplete understanding of income, class, or even the basics of working with one's hands. One allegedly hilarious scene sees Lohan struggling so badly with a toilet brush that she somehow breaks the flush pipe and causes a geyser to erupt as if it's a fire hydrant. Also, the script positively aches for you to view Jake as a down-to-earth small-town underdog whose bed and breakfast embodies the homey charm that is so often forgotten in the face of corporate hotel chains. Meanwhile, his lodge looks more or less exactly like the Swiss Alps spa facility from A Cure for Wellness.
All of that is entirely amusing, as are many other minor moments littered throughout the film. Plus, Lohan seizes the moment to prove that she is still a capable actress who can anchor a film. Unfortunately, what she is anchoring is less a steadfast schooner and more of a paper boat.
Falling for Christmas is hollow, even by the standards of the Netflix Christmas universe. The endings of rom-coms like this are always a foregone conclusion, but the screenwriters embraced that by not even trying at all. The big End of the Second Act fight is resolved between cuts without any character work, and frankly the amount of crap they pile on Sierra in the first act functions to make her an entirely sympathetic character before she learns a single lesson about how not to be an asshole. Another scene that completely fails to establish her arc is watching how difficult it is for her to put a fitted sheet on a mattress, which is really more of a feature of fitted sheets than a defect in her character.
Really, Lohan is being let down by everything around her. Chord Overstreet - whose designer stubble exactly fails to deliver "folksy small-town guy" - sure can fill out some wintertime athleisure wear, but he can't find a satisfying way to volley back the charisma she exudes. And boy is George Young saddled with some of the most noxious comic relief in a good long while.
Unfortunately, it's looking like this is going to be Netflix's marquee Christmas title for the year. They could do much worse (and they have), but Falling for Christmas is ultimately less than the sum of its parts, even if its a not-unpleasant comfort watch.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
However, there's no need to be a Grinch just yet, because their latest film, Falling for Christmas, is delivering on every level. That is, every level of a Netflix Christmas rom-com, which does not include "quality." The film follows spoiled hotel heiress Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan, whose film career Netflix is trying to rehabilitate with an adrenaline shot of Christmas cheer, just like they did with Vanessa Hudgens who is now kept in a cage in the attic next to the box of ornaments and garlands, to be trotted out every winter), who is resisting her father's (Jack Wagner) push to take a cushy corporate job and actively hates her relationship with social media influencer Tad (George Young).
Enter bed and breakfast owner Jake (Chord Overstreet). He is a single father whose daughter Avy (Olivia Perez) wishes he would find love. Naturally, Santa is serving roasted chestnuts nearby (unlike other stupid Christmas properties who are content to have a jolly man with a white beard help the characters out before disappearing, the film desperately wants you to notice that it's Santa, to the tune of a stomach-churning amount of flop-sweaty close-ups) and he grants the wish by sending some magic wind to push Sierra off the top of a mountain. Her fall is broken by her head, which leads to some Overboard style amnesia. During her recovery, she spends the week before Christmas with Jake and Avy, falls in love with the former, and learns just how important it is to be a nice, humble, charitable, Santa-fearing person.
There are only two reasons to watch Netflix Christmas rom-coms. The first is that you love the holiday and want to watch something completely anodyne that is the media equivalent of being wrapped in a cozy sweater while drinking eggnog and eating sugar cookies. The second is if you are someone like me, who has an insatiable capacity for squeezing out every mediocre cinematic dishrag in order to lap up whatever dribble of bad-good entertainment there is to be found within them.
If you are the former, congrats! Put on Falling for Christmas. Godspeed.
If you are the latter, Falling for Christmas unfortunately doesn't have the kind of dizzyingly ludicrous high concept that makes the best Netflix rom-coms shine. However, it is packed with some of my personal favorite tropes of these types of movies. For instance, if you forget for even a single second that the movie takes place over the Christmas holiday, I recommend closing this review and locating the nearest cognitive health professional. Every inch of every frame is decked out in full holiday regalia, including valet parking drop-off zones (a giant decorative pile of presents), headboards (garlands and lights), and even a toilet tank (a mini Christmas tree).
The movie also displays a wildly incomplete understanding of income, class, or even the basics of working with one's hands. One allegedly hilarious scene sees Lohan struggling so badly with a toilet brush that she somehow breaks the flush pipe and causes a geyser to erupt as if it's a fire hydrant. Also, the script positively aches for you to view Jake as a down-to-earth small-town underdog whose bed and breakfast embodies the homey charm that is so often forgotten in the face of corporate hotel chains. Meanwhile, his lodge looks more or less exactly like the Swiss Alps spa facility from A Cure for Wellness.
All of that is entirely amusing, as are many other minor moments littered throughout the film. Plus, Lohan seizes the moment to prove that she is still a capable actress who can anchor a film. Unfortunately, what she is anchoring is less a steadfast schooner and more of a paper boat.
Falling for Christmas is hollow, even by the standards of the Netflix Christmas universe. The endings of rom-coms like this are always a foregone conclusion, but the screenwriters embraced that by not even trying at all. The big End of the Second Act fight is resolved between cuts without any character work, and frankly the amount of crap they pile on Sierra in the first act functions to make her an entirely sympathetic character before she learns a single lesson about how not to be an asshole. Another scene that completely fails to establish her arc is watching how difficult it is for her to put a fitted sheet on a mattress, which is really more of a feature of fitted sheets than a defect in her character.
Really, Lohan is being let down by everything around her. Chord Overstreet - whose designer stubble exactly fails to deliver "folksy small-town guy" - sure can fill out some wintertime athleisure wear, but he can't find a satisfying way to volley back the charisma she exudes. And boy is George Young saddled with some of the most noxious comic relief in a good long while.
Unfortunately, it's looking like this is going to be Netflix's marquee Christmas title for the year. They could do much worse (and they have), but Falling for Christmas is ultimately less than the sum of its parts, even if its a not-unpleasant comfort watch.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Categories: netflix originals, romcoms
