SNAPSHOT
A newly engaged, spoiled hotel heiress (Lindsay Lohan) gets into a bad skiing accident, suffers from total amnesia and finds herself in the care of a handsome, blue-collar lodge owner (Chord Overstreet) and his precocious daughter in the days leading up to Christmas. Falling for Christmas is directed by American writer / producer Janeen Damian, making her feature directorial debut with this film after only producing previously. The screenplay is written by Jeff Bonnett and Ron Oliver; from a story by Jeff Bonnett. Produced by Michael Damian and Brad Krevoy. (synopsis courtesy First Showing)
There is, it is true, nothing truly new under the festive sun, but then that is half the fun of the season.
One of Christmas’s great charms is that everything is so predictable – the tinsel, the tree, the eggnog, the presents, the all-too-easy redemptive tales of Scrooge become epitome of glowingly good humanity etc. etc. – and that, for a short time at least, we can reassure ourselves, in the face of everything to the contrary that life really can be that magically restorative, inclusive and sweetly alive.
While Falling For Christmas does seem to take all the predictability a little bit too much to heart, appropriating from every Christmas film and rom-com you’ve ever seen, most obviously Overboard, it is also like a great big hug of happiness, the kind that you know will deliver just what you want just how you want it.
I’ll be honest – this blogger is far more apt to suspend normally razor sharp critical facilities at Christmas that at any other time of the year (though the Hallmark romantic confections do test that rather strenuously) which means that, hackneyed as it might be, Falling For Christmas will have a place on my viewing schedule because who doesn’t want to believe in second chances, especially when it’s offered by someone as handsome as Chord Overstreet?
Falling For Christmas premieres on Netflix on 10 November.