ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A MILD CONCUSSION

Or: How you'd be toast if it weren't for Lindsay Lohan

As I’m away over Christmas in a winter wonderland/horror lodge (tbd), I’m opening up some of my archived posts for your enjoyment. This one was first published around this time last year. And don’t worry, I’m well aware that there is a much, much worse Christmas movie out there, and I’m on the case. In the meantime, please enjoy my seasonal despair.

I’ve never really liked Christmas much. The magic was lost for me fairly early on in life when, as a small mischievous child, I searched for and found my Christmas present in the bottom of my parents’ wardrobe. It was a Sindy doll, and she came with a free gift of a lovely silver bracelet. The Sindy was absolutely the present I’d asked for and wanted (and at this point, her legs were still firmly attached.) But the bracelet – ah, the bracelet! How it sparkled! How it glittered and gleamed! It was probably made of plastic, but as far as my six-year-old self was concerned, it was basically the Koh-i-Noor diamond and I was the goddamn Queen of Sheba.

I replaced everything very carefully, hiding all traces of my investigations – or so I thought – and spent the next couple of weeks waiting for Christmas in a state of simultaneous excitement and disappointment. (A feeling I have become refamiliarised with as a person who uses online dating apps.) I knew I would only get one present, and it was a wonderful present (that bracelet!) Yet now I had no surprises to look forward to.

But I was wrong. For when Christmas day rolled around and I finally got to open my present, I was absolutely surprised to see that the lovely silver bracelet was… not there.

Imagine my dilemma. I couldn’t ask my mother where the bracelet was, or I would give away that I had sneaked a peek at my present. And yet, maybe there was some mistake. Maybe if I asked her, she would produce the bracelet and all would be well. And so I gathered my courage, and ventured forth.

My mother smiled coldly, her eyes glinting with ice. “What bracelet?” She said. “It doesn’t have a bracelet. Why would you think it came with a bracelet?”

I mean, apart from the fact that I’d seen it with my own eyes, there was also the small matter of the words ‘COMES WITH A FREE BRACELET’ printed across the top of the Sindy packaging. But I was only six, and still quite easy to outwit.

At least my mother got some joy out of Christmas that year, I guess. In later years, she would achieve the same icy delight by giving me the silent treatment for the whole of Advent, or by threatening to kill herself when she got the wrong end of a novelty cracker.

Normally I would have escaped reality with a book, but at Christmas time, I got to escape with Jason and the Argonauts, in black and white, on the telly. Or even better, The Slipper and the Rose, with all the beautiful dresses and silver bracelets I could wish for. It was the perfect film to distract me from the aching void in my soul.

Both my parents are dead now. Well, not my dad. But he’s honestly lucky to be alive after I spent Christmas with him last year. The only things that prevented him getting a whack round the head with a charcuterie board were Netflix and Amazon Prime. We watched a lot of movies and shows and we didn't speak to one another except to say, pass the wine, or pass the crisps, or, are there any more crisps? Or, is there any more wine?

This isn’t completely true. My dad is lovely. But even so, ten days is a lot, and consequently I am now fully up to date with all the Christmas films made between the inception of moving pictures and the last day of 2022. And I can tell you that nearly all of them are awful mindless crap. Which, luckily, happens to be my favourite genre of movie.

All this preamble is to let you know my qualifications for pronouncing ‘Falling for Christmas’ the best worst Christmas movie of the last ten years. It’s so profoundly terrible that there is nothing you can do but stare at the screen in wonderment, and I highly recommend it. We all need some wonderment at this time of year.

Lindsay Lohan ‘stars’ as a rich, lazy hotel heiress with a gay English influencer boyfriend. He proposes to her on a remote green screen. She promptly slides backwards off an ersatz cliff, hits her head, and is taken to hospital by the owner of a ski lodge.

“She has amnesia?” Ski Lodge asks.

“Well, something like that,” says the nurse, doubtfully.

It’s a specific kind of brain injury where not only has she forgotten her name and address, but Ski Lodge, who bumped into her in her father’s hotel only that morning, has also apparently forgotten her name and address, and instead of returning her to her family, he takes her home to his ski lodge and to his vulnerable motherless child.

“You’re the lady who doesn’t know who she is,” says the small innocent girl whose childhood Lindsay Lohan is about to destroy.

“I don’t know who I am. Nothing’s weirder than that,” growls Lindsay Lohan, in her sexy rehab voice. Except, of course, that’s not true. There are lots of things weirder than not knowing who you are. Like not knowing who you are and not, like, asking anyone in the tiny community where you are actually quite well known. Or not knowing who you are, and just randomly moving into some bloke’s ski lodge for what seems like several months (but is apparently only three days), ingratiating yourself into his family and taking over his business.

Because everyone in this movie is extremely insane, Lindsay Lohan falls in love with Ski Lodge. This makes no sense, because he’s a bland, spiritless man, who looks like he got into the ski lodge business after getting kicked out of a boy band for putting on weight. Ski Lodge obviously falls right back in love with her – which makes more sense, because she’s Lindsay Lohan. But they have zero sexual chemistry. Like, zero. I have more sexual chemistry with the AI that tells me my bank account is overdrawn than Lindsay Lohan has with Ski Lodge. She does at least try, but literally his only rizz is a faraway look that suggests he’s probably thinking about donuts.

No one in this movie has an emotional or character arc, unless you count Lindsay Lohan learning how to make a pancake. Which you kind of have to, because it’s the only thing that really happens.

The great thing about this movie – apart from watching Lindsay Lohan’s soul shrivel up right before your eyes – is that it’s absolutely relatable. Who doesn’t want to get hit on the head and wake up in a ski lodge with a new family? And who isn’t at least mildly disappointed when the only surprise they have to look forward to is discovering that they don’t live in a ski lodge after all? And frankly, what’s more relatable than getting into a relationship with a disappointing man, just because he was there when you were slightly concussed and didn’t know how to get home by yourself? And he has a ski lodge.

I can’t guarantee that this movie will stop you from taking out family members by whacking them around the head with a charcuterie board. But it certainly ought to provide some temporary distraction from the endless triggering parade of emotional trauma that is the festive season. And if you’re one of those strange people who actually enjoys Christmas, then you can snuggle with your loved ones in your matching reindeer PJs and giggle about how silly it all is, can’t you, you smug bastards. There’s something for everyone.

Good sleeves, shame about the execrable movie