Can we believe in Lindsay Lohan’s comeback in a Netflix movie?

In the 2000s, everyone wanted to look like Lindsay Lohan or have a girlfriend or BFF who looked like her. The American actress and singer was the author of the botched red dye jobs epidemic and of the compulsive buying of micro checked skirts, pink cardigans, studded belts, and khaki baggies. It only took a handful of films for the American woman to become a generational phenomenon. Among them is the irresistible Freaky Friday (2003), in which she swapped bodies with her mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

 

Lindsay Lohan, the mean girl of the 2000s

 

There is also the iconic Mean Girls (2004), which tells the story of a teenager who has moved several times. This latter has to fit in at a Californian school, which looks a lot like a jungle full of predatory girls wearing crop tops. Yet, these two romcoms, which have been both a public and a critical success, are not as soapy as they seem. Some of the funny, even caustic, dialogues have gone down in history, and the protagonists’ looks are still flooding our TikTok and Instagram feeds today.

 

In 2004, Lindsay Lohan was barely 18 when she embodied a kind of coolness that appealed to youngsters around the world. She was rock and innocent, pretty yet accessible, the “girl next door”, the “ideal friend”, and the bride of an imaginary America all at once. Alongside Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried, she was part of the Hollywoodian new guard, following in the footsteps of Alicia Silverstone and Drew Barrymore – in short, teenage idols with a stunning freshness and a hidden subversive potential…

The curse of the Disney stars

 

Like Britney Spears and many other Disney stars, Lindsay Lohan started her career at a very young age in Walt Disney Pictures productions with the hit family comedy The Parent Trap (1998), before experiencing the other side of the coin. By the mid-2000s, her addiction to drugs and alcohol, as well as her antics, reported in a sexist tone by the tabloids at the time, were damaging her credibility as an actress. She even became a regular at the Razzie Awards, the prizes awarded to the worst actors of the year. In 2010, the star even went to jail for violating her probation after several DUIs since 2007…

 

For the past few years, Lindsay Lohan has tried to make amends with the very rancorous Hollywood producers and with the public. Among a personal whim – she asked for a selfie with Putin in 2016 before her appearance on a Russian talk show –, a stay in rehab, and a reality show, she also appeared in the 2013 thriller The Canyons. Imagined by iconic American writer Bret Easton Ellis and directed by Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), the film talks about kinky love and the vices present in the entertainment industry. It could have given the star a lift, but her acting turned out to be quite monotonous and her charisma was nonexistent.

 

A Christmas movie that comes along at the right time… or not

 

A last-ditch effort? America’s former golden child, once affectionately known as Lilo, is the heroine of the new Netflix Christmas movie Falling for Christmas, released last Thursday, November 10th. She plays the role of the capricious heiress of a hotel group, engaged to an influencer, who becomes amnesiac after a skiing accident. Of course, she will eventually be taken in by a nice chalet owner a few days before Christmas. They will eventually fall for each other’s charm, after feeling a lot of animosity towards each other. It is the same old song, the one from the soapy yet endearing holiday TV movie that rings in our ears every November, along with Mariah Carey’s 1994 hit All I Want for Christmas Is You. Except that the ultra-kitschy and not very funny feature is not the best of its genre. Some productions broadcasted in the afternoon on national television are even better. Worse, the flamboyant and irresistible ex-redhead Lindsay Lohan, who has undergone a metamorphosis, has lost her magnificence and her candor. Her acting is that of a soap opera actress, more than that of a charismatic and talented Hollywood star. Fortunately, the actress already has several other projects in mind, especially for Netflix, such as the romcom Irish Wish set in Ireland and scheduled for 2023. One can hope she won’t miss the boat this time.

 

Falling for Christmas (2022) by Janeen Damian, available on Netflix.