I’m perfectly capable of enjoying a cheesy Lindsay Lohan Netflix rom-com. Last year, I liked “Irish Wish,” and got tweaked for it. (I stand by the affection.) But “Our Little Secret,” Lohan’s new Christmas rom-com, is crumpled tinsel of a different order. I’m tempted to say that it achieves full Netflix cookie-cutter. I cringed, I grimaced, I said “No!…,” I forced myself to stop looking at how much time there was left.
Every rom-com needs that love-story MacGuffin known as the Thing That Keeps Our Two Romantic Co-Stars Apart. But part of the weird ineptitude of “Our Little Secret” is that it doesn’t have that thing. An animated prelude shows us that Avery (Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding) grew up together, became inseparable friends, fell in love…and it was all good. But then we cut to 2014. The two are adults, and Avery is leaving for an unspecified job in London. So the relationship is ending.
We think: Really, why? The movie has told us these two are perfect lovebirds, meant for each other. If that’s the case, and one lands a job in London, wouldn’t they…discuss the future? Talk about what they’re going to do?
Nope. The movie, without devoting one explanatory line of dialogue to it, treats Avery’s career as an existential relationship ender. When Logan, at her going-away party, gets down on one knee to do one of those embarrassing public rom-com marriage proposals, she looks at him like he just threw up on the carpet. She’s aghast. Why? Because the film needs them to be apart and estranged. That’s the only reason. Hailey DeDominicis’ script sacrifices basic human emotion to the logic of arcs and beats and algorithms.
Cut to the present day, where the real fun begins. Avery and Logan are back in their hometown (he’s a building contractor, she’s…well, her job remains vague yet “high-powered”), and each have significant others, both markedly unappealing in that rom-com stooge way. Avery’s boyfriend, Cameron (Jon Rudnitsky), is some sort of nattering cryptcurrency bro. Logan’s girlfriend, Cassie (Katie Baker), is a manipulative Barbie-doll princess. Here’s the hook, the spoiler, the surprise: That awful boyfriend and girlfriend are brother and sister. Which is why Avery and Logan, after having not seen each other for 10 years, wind up at the same upscale family Christmas party, presided over by a WASP matriarch from hell (Kristin Chenoweth), and agree to spend the holiday keeping secret that they were once the perfect couple.
On top of how moviemaking-by-AI it all is, “Our Little Secret,” directed by the once-promising Stephen Herek (“Mr. Holland’s Opus”), is a cringe-fest. Take the scene where Avery, who has gotten accidentally stoned on THC gummies, has to give a speech at church. She does her version of the Nativity story, which somehow incorporates the lyrics to Kool and the Gang’s “Celebrate,” which causes Black members of the choir and the audience to start singing the song, which inspires everyone in the church to start singing it. On the cringe scale, that’s about a 9.2.
Avery and Logan both need to get on the good side of Erica, played by Chenoweth with a control-freak hauteur so brittle it achieves excruciating self-mockery. Lohan, sly and centered, holds her own amidst the broadness, and so does the sharp, dry Ian Harding (from “Pretty Little Liars”). But these two are too dogged to be funny; that’s part of why they belong together. The plot vaccums up all the other characters’ secrets (an affair, a late-night drinking binge…and who ate all the cookies?), then spews them out in a Christmas-as-disaster climax. It’s all spanked along by one of those golly-gee bumptious holiday musical scores.
I do recognize the way a movie like “Our Little Secret” works — how Netflix has changed the aesthetic of wholesome movie cheese. You watch “Our Little Secret,” seeing through the paper-thin contrivances, tittering at the imbecilities, and somehow that all becomes part of the experience. It’s mainstream fodder as downgraded camp. It’s pablum so numbing it makes you feel good.
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