Lindsay Lohan Should’ve Wished for a Better Netflix Movie

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Netflix needs Lindsay Lohan, not the other way around. After Lohan’s highly anticipated, perfectly decent holiday rom-com Falling for Christmas marked her official film comeback in 2022, the power dynamics shifted. Lohan was not just hireable, but she was back onscreen tapping into that effervescent, enigmatic quality that made her a superstar from the jump. And people wanted more.

The public has been champing at the bit and foaming at the mouth for liters of LiLo. The reaction alone to Lohan’s return to the Vanity Fair Oscar party last weekend was enough to confirm that the former tabloid darling is back in a big way. It’s that kind of buzzy excitement that makes Lohan’s latest film with Netflix, Irish Wish, such a disappointment. Where Falling for Christmas felt like an event—one that, granted, had the magical Rudolph-red hue of the holidays working in its favor—Irish Wish plays like a run-of-the-mill streaming romantic comedy that was dropped on its head and is stumbling around, trying to convince everyone that it doesn’t have a concussion.

Christmas movies are expected to have a tolerable level of kitsch. It’s part of their charm. But those low standards don’t apply to other seasonal fare, and certainly not to a love story released in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Irish Wish is bland, woefully flat, and entirely devoid of laughs, and is a vacuum of charisma when its star isn’t in the frame. Netflix might be a safe place for Lohan to get her groove back, but Irish Wish is merely proof that she has much more to offer than what the dearth of streaming can provide her.

Read more at The Daily Beast.