In 2022 Lindsay Lohan marked her return to the film industry after nearly a decade away by starring in the movie “Falling for Christmas”, a romantic comedy released on Netflix. She went on to star in two more romcoms for the streaming service, “Irish Wish” and “Our Little Secret,” which was released several days back. By doing this, Lindsay has demonstrated that she is not just an average Hollywood diva; rather, she is an exceptional screwball comedienne who knows exactly how the industry works and she has decided to carve her unique niche by acting and producing her films. And it definitely adds more value to the cinema.
“Our Little Secret,” Stephen Herek’s feature film, is a more polished production than the other two mainly due to Stephen Herek’s extensive skills in providing studio-style entertainment in the traditional mid-budget range.
He directed films like “Critters”, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”, “The Mighty Ducks”, and “Mr. Hollands Opus”. It’s not a good movie by any means, but then again, neither are some of the titles he’s known for, but the film is entirely different from most Hollywood films such as turkey day family films that are repeatedly released.
Lohan portrays Avery, an accomplished business consultant who owns her own company, who is about to meet her boyfriend Cam’s (Jon Rudnitsky) family for the very first time. Meanwhile Cam’s sister Cassie (Katie Baker) is also bringing her boyfriend home, Logan (Ian Harding), to meet the parents. The catch? In the first scene, we see Avery and Logan, who were childhood best friends until they dated in their teens and early twenties, splitting up ten years ago, coincidentally the same year Avery lost her mother.
Now, these two have to survive a four day long holiday weekend with Cam and Cassie’s filthy rich parents Erica (Kristin Chenoweth) and Leonard (Dan Bucatinsky). The result is perfectly completed marriage-remarriage type screwball comedy with new relationship developments twisted with decidedly aerobics mockery towards Avery and Logan thrust every ten minutes.
Just like in countless screwball comedies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, in which the leading female would have all manner of dresses, so too does Lohan’s Avery. She has the Overachieving Ordinary Girl type look that classic and old Hollywood lovelies had mastered except for her clothes. There Are Different Styles: Every Woman’s Look. But the glamour is toned down so much that she almost becomes a more sophisticated ordinary woman which, it seems, is what Lohan has always excelled at. Lohan has always been good at playing these types of roles which are easy to relate but a bit more hard to get. Avery easily can be one more of the teens she played in all the films “The Parent Trap”, “Freaky Friday” or “Mean Girls” while all have pretty much grown.
Avery is amiable and has an easy chemistry with Harding who portrays his Logan as a decent guy who simply made a couple of wrong choices but would do anything to make things better for himself. Harding however is a totally different actor and unlike most of these sorts of Christmas rom-coms, he doesn’t present Logan to be some dreamy romance.
Rather than trying to regain Avery’s affection, he retains a passive role from which he assists Avery in winning over Cam’s parents, and as a result, we are given an insight into the origins of their deeply routed friendship without any superficial movie-like ‘love,’ which is more of a possessive notion.
Herek’s directing style is comical to say the least, moving the viewer’s focus to Avery’s perspective as she quietly wanders Erica’s Mcmansion. Embarrassingly, Avery’s character ends up at a church’s kid’s show after unknowingly gorging herself with a bag of weed gummies. The sequence made me laugh out loud and the animated motion picture of Mother Mary adds vividness to it. This sequence gives Lohan a spectacular view of comedic facial acting.
Chenoweth is splendid as a Southern Queen Bee, or so the term goes, as she runs her household ‘plot’ in a very navy-like strict manner, a mixture between a ‘don’t eat more than two cookies’ and ‘honey because ‘you-need’ it’ persona.
Tim Meadows and Judy Reyes portray the married family friends, but regretfully they do not have enough scenes along with the rest of the supporting cast, embracing their stock tropes. Katie Baker, portraying the narcissistic Cassie who is fun, there was an opportunity for her to perform much however like Mary Astor in “The Palm Beach Story“, she does not get enough material to portray and perform her roles greatly.
When it comes to a sense of loss, Avery coming to terms and overcoming everything that could remind her about her mother is still something that can be explored more. This is why some of the plots towards the third act can get a little off balance. I attribute Avery and Logan’s profound friendship and bond to the emotional scenes in the film because the actors did an incredible job. So it all works out perfectly in the end.
On the whole, “Our Little Secret” is entertaining, mainly kid-friendly and Christmas oriented screwball comedies starring Lohan, who is at her best doing comedy. At the very least, it restates the point that if these kinds of movies were supported by producers for a theatrical audience, then perhaps the world would see famous actors once more, Andrzej Wajda. Now THAT would be a miracle for Christmas.
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