Quick summary:
Have you seen a Hallmark Christmas movie? Then you’ve seen “Our Little Secret” (which, according to Katya, sounds like a Lifetime movie about molestation). Avery (Lindsay Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding) are two friends turned lovers who split up when she receives a job offer in London and his bitch ass can’t handle it. Ten years later and both with new partners, they reunite in their hometown of Peachtree City as many hijinks ensue. This movie has it all: charming twinkle lit scenes, a tiny dog named Veronica, a surprising number of respectable actors, and so little sex that the word can’t even be uttered: it must be spelled out elementary school playground-style (S-E-X). If that all sounds good, you will probably enjoy this 101 minute holiday lobotomy.
Who's involved:
The script is written by newcomer Hailey DeDominicis and while I personally think it’s trash, Netflix bought it and she now has multiple other projects in development, so what the fuck do I know? 50 percent of the United States voted for Trump and the success of hollow, empty art like this feels reflective of that contingent. DeDominicis wants to make a living as a writer and this is what people watch/buy, so I fault the fucked up film industry more than her.
Stephen Herek, who you should know from classics like “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989) and “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” (1991), directs. Again, I'm sure they were offering money and he wanted money.
The cast inexplicably features several solid actors, including
- SNL alums Tim Meadows (also of “Mean Girls”), Chris Parnell, and Jon Rudnitsky
- Ian Harding (Mr. Fitz, the English teacher/groomer from “Pretty Little Liars”)
- Broadway legend Kristin Chenoweth
- Valerie Cherish’s publicist, Billy Stanton (Dan Bucatinsky)
- The beloved Judy Reyes (Carla from “Scrubs,” Quiet Ann from “Claws”)
- Henry Czerny (Conrad Grayson, the evil billionaire CEO from “Revenge”)
And of course, Lindsay Lohan, in the third movie of her comeback arc.
Vibe:
According to Saul, it’s the duty of holiday films to be entertaining while not so subtly pushing the heteronormative Christian agenda of nuclear families that make babies between attractive bland people, who are deemed ethnically acceptable by casting directors. This film fulfills that duty, and while [insert batshit crazy conservative politician here] would disapprove of women having jobs and being stoned in church, everything else basically adheres to the Republican agenda.
Best time to watch:
When social gatherings need mouth to mouth, Lorelai Gilmore brings out Bop It! In a pinch, “Our Little Secret” works just as well. There’s something for everyone! The gays get Kristin Chenoweth and Lindsay Lohan; boomers escape to an alternate reality where they have good relationships with their adult children; film snobs nap for the full runtime without missing anything. Differences aside, the overwhelming consensus is that it’s so nice to see Lindsay Lohan looking healthy and happy.
Saul says it's great to watch when your boyfriend calls but has nothing to say. You two can fire up the space heater in your own apartments, pet the kitty on your lap, and idly comment on plot points for a couple hours — instead of bitching about work to each other.
If you’re a horny heterosexual man looking to lose his boner before a work meeting, class, or visiting your partner’s family during the holidays, this film will probably help. Honestly no one should get it up for this film.
Worst time to watch:
Don’t watch when your faculties are intact. If you’re sober, healthy, and not in desperate need of something to fill the silence, you can do better. Even catastrophes like “Jingle All the Way” (1996) are more worthwhile because the cinematography and production design have a point of view beyond maximizing shareholder profits.
Where to watch:
Netflix, baby… the company responsible for cranking out all of this mediocre drivel that looks and sounds exactly the same in the spirit of unfettered capitalism.
Thoughts:
Saul: I’ve been idly wondering lately why we ever cared so much about Lindsay Lohan. I think it was that bottleneck effect before widespread Internet and social media fame. Misogynist casting directors focused on a mostly-white Hollywood decided who should be famous, and those images were bolstered in magazines and on talk shows. Lindsay charms with her eyes and easygoing onscreen persona — but a talented actress she has never been.
Lindsay: At my middle school, there was a hierarchy of tween obsession where the Olsen twins were unquestionably at the top, followed by other young actresses like Hilary Duff (“Lizzie McGuire”), Amanda Bynes (“All That,” “The Amanda Show”), and Lindsay Lohan (“The Parent Trap,” “Life-Size,” “Freaky Friday”). Because they started out so young, we came of age together and they felt less like celebrities and more like distant friends whose exciting lives evolved from afar. When Perez Hilton’s skeevy ass began documenting their cocaine-fueled shenanigans, those stories became more interesting than any of their actual projects. In a way, they were proto-influencers who stayed in the zeitgeist because of our attachment to their public image.
In the case of Lohan, we’ve been watching her comeback attempt since the ill-fated “Liz and Dick” in 2012. I remember reading a 2013 piece in the New York Times about her behavior on the set of “The Canyons” and someone in the comments said, “Everything I hear or read about Lohan seems like the back story to an obituary.”
Saul: I remember that essay about "The Canyons." I mostly learned that famous people can’t trash other property just because they’re famous — Lindsay owed some huge hotel bill. I also got interested in the porn actor James Deen then; he’s in straight porn but for the women? But he still went down in flurry of rape and misconduct reports. Because of course.
Lindsay: At this point, society has embraced Lindsay’s return not because she brings anything special to the table, but because it’s a small miracle she’s not dead. Like… If Lindsay Lohan can get her shit together, maybe there’s still hope for me. Will that last past this string of shiteous Netflix movies? TBD. If “Freakier Friday” doesn’t play to her strengths, that might be where it all ends.
Saul: I’m surprised she recovered enough to land “Freakier Friday.” The persistent narrative about Lohan is that she’s never professional onset. Always late, etc. Why did anyone agree to this?
Okay, but turning to this Netflix entry: I put it on because — as you note — I had a “desperate need to fill the silence.” But that’s common when you live alone and bore easily. I find most films and TV shows fast-forwardable, so this isn’t "Our Little Secret's" big offense. In fact I found a lot of its blandness tolerable, and Kristin Chenoweth was fairly enjoyable. Chenoweth’s character reminds me of Nicole from this takedown of the Hallmark YouTube Channel. Nicole basically lives in a bougie uptight vibe, and she spends most of her time making swipes at Lauren about drinking tons of tequila and bringing screw-top wine to work.
As I sit here writing this, I’ve realized Chenoweth was the only enjoyable part of this whole film. Everyone else gets a slow clap for waking up that day and going to their acting job.
Lindsay: My top three characters are Chenoweth, the friend who meets Avery after work with the screw top wine and then is never seen again, and the senile grandma who everyone gaslights even though that seems like a very bad thing to do to someone with dementia. In another week, I’ll have erased this entire movie from my brain. If someone had a gun to my head, forcing me to choose between watching this movie again or every video from the Hallmark YouTube Channel, I’d go with the latter. Or more realistically, I’d just tell them to pull the trigger.
Saul: So the montage. Honestly I felt gaslit by the Cyber Truck. It’s also the bare minimum of queer representation any film could have, with a quick drive-by of a groom-and-groom cake topper to signify legalized gay marriage in 2015. And of course the cake topper is two white guys.
Lindsay: I want to know how they decided what to include in this decade-long vomit stream. It’s like someone started riffing after taking a bump and they copied it down verbatim. They’ve mixed legitimately important events and random nonsense with zero logic. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Tide pod challenge, JK Rowling hates trans people! The aliens have come to earth and they’re flipping through the headlines, trying to make sense of humanity.
The song in the background, Calvin Harris’s “Summer,” doesn’t make contextual sense, either. The lyrics are about falling in love in the summer but this is a movie that takes place solely at Christmas time. When it debuted in 2014, the track made more than $1M on Spotify alone, so I guess it’s a popular callback to the beginning of the timeline when Avery moves to London and ends things with Logan. I can’t believe 32.4M people watched this idiot movie over its debut weekend. I know every generation feels this way and blah, blah but we are truly living in a cursed timeline. [Insert Paris Geller’s rant about commodity fetishists here.]
Saul: I’ll just leave this here for nostalgia:
Saul: None of the characters seem genuinely in love or even like each other. Ian Harding has more chemistry with a sack of potatoes than he does Lindsay Lohan. I refuse to believe they couldn’t get a C-List soap actor with $75,000 of plastic surgery and 10 hours a day at the gym to play her love interest. Having said that, I’d actually bend over for Jon Rudnitsky in this film, but I share his struggle of looking like a derp in still images, versus live-action.
I very much want to see Lohan do a lesbian holiday film next time, or pull a Reese Witherspoon and just walk from Mexico to Canada while throwing hiking boots into the snow and screaming.
Lindsay: Chenoweth and Veronica the dog are the only pair with chemistry. Isn’t Chad Michael Murray in one of these Netflix Christmas movies? Why didn’t they lean into “Freaky Friday” nostalgia by casting him opposite Lohan? Oh wait, I’m thinking about the Netflix overlords as people who want to create a product with entertainment value when in reality, they’ll settle for any random slop that keeps the content machine chooching. My bad.
I don’t want to see Lohan do a bargain basement version of “Happiest Season” unless it's with Samantha Ronson (again, for nostalgia).
Saul: None of the gags land for me. The church moment is highly predictable, as is the fact she got high on weed in the first place. I laughed a little when the dog vet still charged her for faking the Yorkie’s sickness, and the bill was more than $1,000. This is just real. Vets never seem to upfront tell you the cost and then at the end, they’re like, “if your Am Ex is maxed out that’s cool; we’ll take your left kidney too.”
The most effective storytelling happened in the cartoon open and closers. I liked Henry Czerny’s description of love in the first scene. And in an age of AI, this looks like they hired a decent illustrator for this moment.
Lindsay: I wanted this to turn into a horror movie where Callum (Jake Brennan), the creepy youngest brother, holds Avery hostage and starts cutting off her fingers when Logan refuses to comply with his demands. Or maybe like… Veronica ends up dying because she actually did ingest chocolate via the cookies Lohan smears on her face. We need a sex scandal or a murder to spice up this snoozefest. At the very least, they should have tried to get a Tom Selleck cameo.
I agree with you about the animation, though. It’s cute and kudos to them (the bar is so fucking low) for not using AI.
Saul: I also wanted the dog to die. Just some reality in this entire film, like my version is the dog didn’t eat the cookies, but they took her to the vet and the intervention meds induced a heart attack or something. Yes I’m going to hell and that’s fine; This movie is boring.
In any Lohan dissection, the conversation will inevitably return to how healthy and happy she looks in this film. “We’re so happy she’s doing well,” yadda yadda. But Lindsay never fell off the rails like Britney Spears or Amanda Bynes. She didn’t shave her head or gain a bunch of weight or have a psychotic break in Fresno. She mostly looked bad under tacky lights in court, and even then it’s just because she was ugly crying after learning DUIs and drug possession come with jail time.
I'm obsessed with the juxtaposition of these images. It's easy to stage a comeback with Ellen von Unwerth as your photographer.
Drugs are bad, don’t do them. Stop aspiring to be Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. Also stop seeking attention in your career and then complaining that no one leaves you alone; This take makes much more sense coming from Chappell Roan. Leave Chappell Roan alone!
Somehow as an audience, we’ve been sold on this redemption arc that didn’t really exist for Lohan — and we interpret her current success by marveling at her plastic surgery, and that she can walk and talk, and work with other actors. This isn’t a reason to keep watching her shitty films, but we probably will anyway.
Lindsay: A mere six years ago (likely either pissed or in the midst of a mental health crisis), she accused a random family of trafficking their children on a bizarre Instagram live. More than once, she got a community service slap on the wrist after doing something egregious that could have killed someone, like driving under the influence. Everyone likes to talk about how bad the early aughts were for women and that we now owe them apologies; while I understand the sentiment, I’m also not clamoring for her comeback. Just because she looks good and has a baby doesn’t mean she deserves our time or attention. I will not fall for the glossy PR “healthy and happy” nonsense; that narrative only gets an actor so far unless there’s actual talent involved.
Saul: We talked about her recently, but I do think Katherine Heigl is owed one. She was thrown out for being a terror onset, meanwhile the actors on Grey’s were working 16-hour days while burning bovine parts in surgical masks. She recently had a really fun talk with Ellen Pompeo, where the latter said Heigl was just too early in speaking out publicly. Because remember this was 2006 before Twitter really brought the blue check phenomena and everyone had an opinion. I agree with Pompeo, even though I’m sure Heigl was the sort of coworker I would not invite to cocktails.
And re: “Happiest Season,” lesbian rom-coms, and all things "Gilmore Girls" on this website, did you know Heigl’s comeback struggle included this little nugget with Alexis Bledel? Oop it’s written and directed by a woman, Mary Agnes Donoghue, who did the “Beaches” screenplay. I feel like it’s just begging for us to read it for filth next.
Lindsay: I said meaner things about Heigl via text than I’m willing to say here (and that’s the benefit of being my friend), but I believe you that she’s owed an apology. I was never big into the “Grey’s Anatomy” drama, but it was impossible to avoid the headlines surrounding her departure from the show. And of course, all the unnecessary Emmy drama is still being dissected. It would be a lot easier to tell if women in the public eye have been wronged or are just assholes if we didn’t need to wade through a sea of misogyny in the process.
Let’s tear “Jenny’s Wedding” a new asshole next. I can’t believe Mary Agnes Donoghue wrote the screenplay to “White Oleander” before moving on to this garbage. Alexis Bledel was good in “Handmaid’s Tale” and “Mad Men,” but all of her other post-”Gilmore” projects have been… lacking. I could see her turning up in one of these Netflix original disasters if she ever needs the money.
Saul: I have to add that the bar is really fucking that low for any holiday film. I’ve seen a fair few of them, and they’re all like this. My favorite is “Single All The Way” mostly because it inspired a total Trixie meltdown where she flipped this table. (Full recap watch here.)
Stray observations:
- There’s one scene at the “meeting the parents” Christmas party where Avery is dissociating with a glass of champagne in the kitchen as someone in the background says, “I’m raking in bitcoin like you wouldn’t believe. And, frankly, this time next year I think I’m gonna have a boat.” Honestly, who cares if the human race ends? We’re clearly at rock bottom.
- Based on Avery’s blasé reaction to Tom Selleck as “Magnum, P.I.” and her missing chemistry with both love interests, I think she's due for a midlife lesbian awakening.
- Most of Erica’s lines are perfectly suitable for Emily Gilmore, who I imagine has similar disdain for screw-top wine, denim (at least until “A Year in the Life”), eating too many cookies, etc.
- What the fuck is this lifestyle complex that Stan is trying to build? He says, “It's a bit of a passion project for people my age too old to be going to the clubs and too young to be playing tranquilized chess.” So like… pickleball?
- A construction proposal entitled “Construction Proposal”? I don’t even need to read it: you’re hired.
- The crucifix at this church is a dead ringer for Cynthia, Angelica’s doll from “Rugrats.”
- My friend Sophie adds, "The character named Logan was NOT a Logan. He was a Steve, and it's impossible to remember his face when you're not looking at it." I completely agree with this, even after suffering through seven seasons of "Pretty Little Liars" (Who am I kidding? I loved it.)
- The credits feature a cute illustration of Veronica the Yorkie, but the dog performer is not listed. Give this bitch her flowers! I hope her real name is less stupid.
