Yes, I'm the guy who watched Irish Wish on St. Patrick's Day

When Netflix dreamed up their algorithm, they had saps like me in mind.

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.

Is thinking you saw the same as seeing?

I usually write my Friday blog posts, which are often tied to one (or more) of that week's new releases, at my desk at work, early, before my co-workers come in. Because of that, they are necessarily speculative posts, either making a prediction of the film's quality based on available evidence (which I've been told is a critically suspect exercise, and I partly agree), or writing about some larger trend of which the movie in question is emblematic.

This week, however, I'm home on paternity leave -- I should put that in quotation marks, because I'm taking vacation days to do it -- so my Friday new-release post gets to be about a movie I've actually seen.

This afternoon, I finagled some time away from the wife and child to Feed the Beast, and I saw Machete, the Robert Rodriguez-directed (with a hand from some guy named Ethan Maniquis) full-length version of a trailer Rodriguez created for Grindhouse -- a Mexploitation film starring Danny Trejo.

But if you've been reading my blog for long, you know that my focus is not usually reviews, so I'm not going to submit a review of Machete just because I've seen it early enough to be timely with the review. If it ain't broke, why fix it? (And if it is broke, please just allow me to continue on in my ignorance of that fact.)

Instead, I want to talk about Lindsay Lohan's boobs.

Which do not make an appearance in Machete. But if you're not a very discriminating audience member, you might think that they do.

See, Lohan plays a character that the poster you see here wants you to think is nicknamed "The Sister." That's a bit of exploitation hype that has only to do with the marketing of the movie. Lohan is actually the daughter of a corrupt political aide who wants to make a career as an erotic internet model. It's not spoiling much to tell you that she gets kidnapped, nude, and stashed in a church. Upon awakening, she dresses herself in a nun's habit, because it's the only available clothing. The fact that she suddenly has skills with an automatic weapon is just fetishistic violent fluff.

So right before she gets kidnapped, she's making out in a pool -- alongside her mother -- with Machete. Both women are naked, and in this particular shot, both bear their breasts for all the world to see.

Except it's not really Lohan. It's a body double.

(The woman playing her mother, an actress named Alicia Marek, appears to be doing the stunt herself.)

I knew it right away. The woman who's supposed to be Lohan's character, April, is turned in to Trejo's body, so her face can't be seen. In fact, it doesn't even look like they made a very earnest attempt to duplicate Lohan's hairstyle on the body double. If the blatant disguising of her face were not evidence enough, I knew also that Lindsay Lohan -- no matter how far she may have fallen -- is one of those actresses who's squeamish about nudity. Kind of like her Machete co-star Jessica Alba, who has an almost nude scene herself, where the positioning of her arms and legs covers everything you might want to see.

But what about all those innocents out there who don't know about body doubles, who leave Machete telling their friends that Lindsay Lohan gets topless in it? Is thinking you saw Lindsay Lohan's boobs the same as actually seeing Lindsay Lohan's boobs?

When thinking about body doubles, I always think back -- for some reason -- to the movie Slums of Beverly Hills. Marisa Tomei's in the movie, and she uses a body double for a quick topless scene. Of course, the Marisa Tomei of 2007-2010 is much different than the Marisa Tomei of 1998 -- she practically has a clause in her contracts requiring nudity these days. Back then, however, she was far more prudish. And I clearly remember the one body double shot, where you see basically a pair of boobs on screen, and that's it -- no head, and not much of a belly either. Just the boobs. They could have been anybody's boobs, even the boobs of a blonde or a redhead.

But I remember thinking at the time that there were certainly many people watching that movie who thought they were seeing Marisa Tomei's boobs. And thinking that if she really wanted to maintain the reputation of an actress who doesn't do nudity, she shouldn't even have a body double who would fool certain naive viewers into thinking they saw her boobs. I remember thinking that there should be some kind of pop-up that occurred during the movie, complete with an asterisk, that said "Not Marisa Tomei's boobs!" Just to prevent any possible confusion.

And now the one TMZ calls "Lilo" is in the same situation. Just think of all those sweet simpletons in the heartland of America, who don't know a body double from a key grip from a dolly grip from a green screen, who will now spend the rest of their lives thinking that they glimpsed the promised land: the supple young breasts of one of Hollywood's most lusted after pieces of former jailbait. And because they may not have any acquaintances who will correct that misconception, they may go to their graves thinking they know what Lilo's breasts look like. Could this kind of ignorance be bliss?

I guess for Lindsay Lohan, it really doesn't matter anymore. You might ask why she doesn't just go ahead and do nudity -- heck, maybe do a whole sex tape. She's definitely sunk to the kind of professional and personal depths in which a sex tape would not necessarily be considered a step downward. When you think about it, there are two reasons most actresses don't want to do nudity: 1) They think it demeans them, and they want to keep the mystique of their private body intact; 2) They think it will negatively impact their career, will keep them from getting cast in movies financed by Disney, for example. Well, Lohan's Disney days are long over. If she wanted to show some nipples, even some muff, it might only help her.

And actually, there is some satisfaction in Machete for the prurient viewers out there. There's one scene, right before she dons that habit, when Lohan's long curls are only barely covering their curvaceous fleshy neighbors to the south. Yes, the real Lohan, not her double. As she goes from seated to standing up, the hair brushes aside long enough for one pretty clear shot of a nipple. It won't make very useful spank material, even for people who can pause their eventual DVD copies of the film, but it is there -- a certified Lohan nipple spotting. Lord be praised.

Thankfully, that's not the only reason to see Machete. I said I wouldn't submit a full Machete review, but it would be cruel to leave you without saying something of substance about it. So I'll tell you that although Machete is quite entertaining, it would have been a lot more so with 20 fewer minutes and about five fewer characters. The number of different bad guys in this movie nearly makes your head spin, and while some of that casting is deceptively brilliant (Jeff Fahey, Steven Seagal), other stunt casting doesn't really register the way it should (Don Johnson). Also, I'll say the movie needed a bit more of the Grindhouse grunge of Rodriguez' Planet Terror, in which it looked like the film stock was nearly falling apart there on the reel. Here, Rodriguez and Maniquis apply that look haphazardly, and the film in general looks a lot cleaner than it should. Whether that was their artistic choice or the artistic choice of Twentieth Century Fox, it's hard to say.

Oh, and Danny Trejo is one awesome action star who shouldn't have had to wait this long for his own badass vehicle.

With that, I bid you a-boob -- I mean, adieu.