Yes, there are certain people who are so accustomed to choosing thematically appropriate viewing material at certain times of the year that they will watch a bad Lindsay Lohan movie on St. Patrick's Day just because someone decided to take a standard romantic comedy plot and set it in Ireland.
And just so there was no confusion about whether you were supposed to watch it on St. Patrick's Day, Netflix released it just two days beforehand and called it Irish Wish.
To be fair, I didn't actually know it starred Lindsay Lohan just from the promotional materials, those being one of the screen-saver stills Netflix offers you when you've paused too long, showing each for ten to 15 seconds. It's actually one of my most common ways to learn about new viewing options on Netflix.
I saw the red-haired woman and just assumed she was some Irish lass I didn't know, since red hair seems to be a common thing in Ireland. I mean, she looks like Lindsay Lohan, but it never even occurred to me that it might be Lindsay Lohan because I thought they drummed Lindsay Lohan out of the industry years ago. So gone was Lindsay Lohan from my mind, I didn't even think "That woman looks like Lindsay Lohan."
So I first got Irish Wish on my radar as a bad romantic comedy not starring Lindsay Lohan, and it was not my first consideration of what to watch on Sunday night either. At first I considered a personal favorite like John Carney's Once, but I did already watch Once on St. Patrick's Day six years ago. That's a recent enough viewing for that film, much as I love it, plus, the people who like their thematic viewings also like finding new ways to interpret the themes. Plus, I had already rewatched something on Saturday night -- Andy Muschietti's It -- and I felt like alternating new and prior viewings on this particular weekend.
Without another obvious candidate for an Irish film I needed to see sitting in the informal watchlist in my brain, I decided to just go with Irish Wish and continue to build my 2024 list. If I'm not going to watch this movie now, I'm certainly not going to seek it out in August, when there will be a dozen more bad romantic comedies on streaming services to choose from that will benefit from being more recent.
It was only then that I finally figured out it was Lindsay Lohan.
And at the point that I had already committed to it, I used this this new information to support my choice rather than detract from it, albeit for reasons of morbid curiosity.
Those reasons being: What does a Lindsay Lohan who has been seven times through the ringer still have left in the tank at this stage of a career that I did not know was still going on?
Actually Lohan has been working more than you might think she'd been. If I'd already seen the Mean Girls remake, I'd be able to tell you she had what sounds like a cameo in that (her character is listed as Mathletes Moderator). She's had work sprinkled throughout the rest of the previous decade, with no credits in some years but multiple credits in others. And yes, some of these are just cameos, and in one of them she plays herself, but now that she's got her second movie of 2024, it's reasonable to wonder if it would be possible for her to make a comeback -- even at age 37, when most actresses are starting to see their roles dry up rather than take off.
Well, from Irish Wish, I'd say not really.
Lohan is not unappealing. But the teenage spunk that gave her her initial breakout in a movie like Mean Girls or The Parent Trap or Freaky Friday -- I think the reason I confuse the plots of those last two was because Lohan was in both -- just isn't there anymore. Naturally gifted performers would retain that even through all sorts of personal and legal troubles. For example, years of drug-related disasters did not take any of the shine off recent Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr.'s craft. With Lohan, though, the years have taken a toll on what she brings to the screen.
And this is not because she's looking old, which would be a standard sexist gripe to make about a woman nearing 40. She's pretty well preserved, though she's probably had a little of that proactive plastic surgery women get so that when they really need plastic surgery -- according to them, anyway -- it isn't such a shock to us. Still, to even discuss any meaningful way Lohan looks different from how she looked in Mean Girls, beyond being 20 years older, has no value, because she looks pretty much exactly like a 37-year-old Lindsay Lohan should look. I only didn't recognize her in that first still from Irish Wish because for a minute there, I sort of forgot she existed.
But she doesn't really have the dexterity or the fitness for light physical comedy or the easy charm of a goofy facial expression that she once had. It's like she's performing self-consciously, aware that we are all looking at her and wondering if she's still got it. It's like she knows that she needs to -- or feels like she needs to -- apologize for her past transgressions, and hope we're still willing to accept her into our hearts.
Which doesn't make her unappealing, as I said, but it does put a likely cap on her opportunities going forward.
As for the movie itself, well, it's just standard romantic comedy pablum, given a superficial sense of Irish charm by being mostly set there, by having a few characters with exaggerated Irish characteristics and by setting a romantic scene at the Cliffs of Moher. Movies that really have Irish bonafides would be about an Irish protagonist rather than an American book editor (is book editor the most common job for a romantic comedy heroine?) who is only in the country for an Irish wedding.
I guess asking Lohan to do an Irish accent, when she's just trying to get a steady paycheck, would be a bridge too far.
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