DIRECTOR: Janeen Damian
CAST: Lindsay Lohan, Chord Overstreet, George Young, Jack Wagner, Olivia Perez, Alejandra Flores, Chase Ramsey, Sean J. Dillingham, Antonio D. Charity
RUNNING TIME: 93 mins
CERTIFICATE: PG
BASICALLY…: A spoiled heiress (Lohan) gets amnesia following a skiing accident…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
The holiday season is fast approaching once more, and there’s certainly a lot of festive excitement in the air – especially, I’m presuming, at the offices of the Motion Picture Corporation of America. The low-budget production company, previously known throughout the 90s and early 2000s for backing films like Dumb and Dumber, Beverly Hills Ninja and A Love Song for Bobby Long, has made a killing over the last few years by making and releasing via Netflix a slew of cheery, formulaic Christmas-themed movies that you would normally find on the Hallmark or Lifetime channels – among them, A Christmas Prince (and its many sequels), The Princess Switch (and ITS many sequels), and last year’s offering A Castle for Christmas (yet to be followed by many inevitable sequels, judging by the pattern).
This year, they’re back at it again with Falling for Christmas, which like their other Christmas movies is predictable, corny, and completely and utterly ridiculous – and I’d be lying if I said that there was little to no charm to its silliness.
The movie follows Sierra (Lindsay Lohan), the spoiled rotten heiress to an up-end hotel chain, who is spending her Christmas being pampered at her father’s (Jack Wagner) ski resort with her foppish self-centred boyfriend Tad (George Young). Whilst out skiing, Tad proposes to her, but their newly engaged bliss is interrupted by a storm, which sends Sierra tumbling down a mountain and landing head-first into a tree. She later wakes with absolutely no memory of who she is, and is put into the care of handsome widow Jake (Chord Overstreet), the owner of a much more modest ski lodge on the other side of town. Naturally, Sierra begins to learn how to do things for herself, and how to be a better and more responsible person while, of course, also developing feelings for Jake, his family, his lodge, and – perhaps most important in these movies – the Christmas spirit.
Like the vast majority of MPCA’s Christmas movies, there’s hardly any point going into too much criticism about Falling for Christmas, because by this point everyone should know exactly what to expect. From the decorations spread all throughout the sets, to a soundtrack that’s always blaring festive music, all the way down to the constant red-and-green colour scheme that is apparent in each and every shot (every single person in this movie is either wearing red or green clothes, or some variant where at least one of the colours is clearly visible), it’s clear that the filmmakers aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they’re making a Christmas movie, and are perfectly comfortable with that fact. It’s often laughable how much Christmas they always seem to cram into these movies, and Falling for Christmas really isn’t that much different as it too embraces its own identity without ever taking itself too seriously, which like the other MPCA offerings does add a level of charm to how manufactured and over-the-top it is with its ties to the holiday.
Beyond the heavy Christmas theme, the film is all sorts of ridiculous – least of all because, given the plot and even some of the characters, it pretty much is The Overboard Holiday Special. Of course, it never gets as bonkers or even as funny as the Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn comedy (and, to a lesser extent, the Anna Faris/Eugenio Derbez remake), but much like that 80s romp there are aspects to this amnesia plotline that are more than a little questionable, and could certainly irk some viewers with how lightly it treats a rather serious cognitive condition. However, this really isn’t the kind of movie that requires much thought, and I mean that in a positive sense because, again, there’s a certain charm that comes with MPCA Christmas movies like this, where it certainly adheres to a formulaic structure that makes things endlessly predictable, but is so positive and unashamed of itself that it really does become hard to resist. You might know exactly what’s going to happen with Lindsay Lohan – who, by the way, it’s rather nice to see in something again – and her impossibly perfect love interest, but it’s all so warm and inviting that you don’t mind sitting and spending time in this crazy universe as the conventions are laid out right in front of you. Sure, the plot is almost directly copying a much funnier movie, but after a certain point you really just don’t care.
These movies are the epitome of guilty pleasures, where you know everything that’s technically and critically wrong with it, but can’t help but get caught up in the overly optimistic, but undeniably manufactured, Christmas tone that it constantly promotes. Falling for Christmas simply is another one of these movies, and you may laugh all you want at its corniness (as I certainly did in some parts), but you can’t deny that it’s a harmless, pleasant enough time-waster to switch your brain off for.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Falling for Christmas is a ridiculous but harmless Christmas movie that, much like the other ones from Netflix and MPCA, bathes itself in endless festive spirit that is undeniably manufactured and corny, but its ability to embrace what it is adds a level of charm to itself, and makes it pleasantly thought-free entertainment that you can’t help but enjoy, despite its obvious faults.
