Set in a luxurious mountaintop ski resort, Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan) is the pampered heir to the prestigious Belmont Hotels and is currently dating influencer Tad Fairchild (George Young) while also being pressured by her father Beauregard (Jack Wagner) to take the position of VP of Atmosphere for Belmont hotels, a position that carries no real responsibility. Meanwhile at the neighboring North Star Lodge, Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet) the widowed owner of the lodge is struggling to keep the resort alive in the face of competition from larger resorts and Airbnbs. When Jake's daughter, Avy (Olivia Perez) makes a Christmas wish, Sierra finds herself knocked unconscious during Ted's proposal with the two of them separated after fall down the cliff. Jake finds the unconscious Sierra during a sleighride and takes her to town for medical assistance, but Sierra has suffered memory loss and has no identification. Jake offers Sierra a room at the lodge until someone finds her or her memory returns and finds difficulty adjusting to the simpler ways of doing things.
Falling for Christmas is the latest Christmas rom-com from Netflix which like many streamers and cable channels routinely churns out these well trodden formula films with great regularity with the template popularized by Hallmark's TV movies to the point "Hallmark" has become synonymous with these kinds of films even if the film itself has nothing to do with Hallmark. Falling for Christmas was announced in May 2021 as part of a two picture deal between Netflix and Lindsay Lohan who will next year release Irish Wish for the streamer. The movie's positioned as something of a "comeback" for Lohan, and while I don't know what, if any, long term effect this film will have, it pretty much delivers on what you expect from this kind of movie.
It's pretty pointless critiquing the plot of not just one of these films, but pretty much any romantic comedy as the genre is heavily based on formula and gimmick so the elevating factor will always be whether the writing is strong and the chemistry between the leads is good. The writing in Falling for Christmas pretty much knows what kind of movie this is down to the opening phone call between Sierra and Tad so thick with fast delivered exposition you could cut it with a knife. You can recognized all the tropes you know such as spoiled socialite who gets taken back "down to earth", precocious child character, widowed good hearted single father male lead, and quirky small town residents. The movie is more or less a redress of the 1987 rom-com Overboard only minus the revenge/servitude angle that's made that film have something of a hindsight re-evaluation. For what the cast are called to do, they do it well and the cast do seem to have genuine chemistry with each other as you can see in the outtakes (which I recommend you stick through). Lohan and Overstreet are appealing leads and they do seem fun together, but I think the funniest part was the B-plot where Sierra's finance Tad treks through the woods with a hermit played by Sean J. Dillingham which has some standard "fish out of water" gags but there's something about the way these two work off each other that makes the scenes work.
What more can I even say here? You know exactly what kind of movie this is and whether or not you're going to watch it. I guess all I can say is I did laugh and enjoy myself and I liked the cast.
