There’s really only one thing that a couple in a rom-com has to do for the movie to be, if not good, at least to some extent watchable: The two people at the center of the action, whose will-they-won’t-they romance drives the plot ever forward, need to actually act like they like each other.
The audience needs to be convinced, as early and as definitively as possible, that everything keeping these two apart must be destroyed. Every scene including both of them must be charged with that energy, so that even if the plot of the movie is bad, or even just boring, the spark between the two main characters is enough to make you want to see how it all turns out. By contrast, while watching Our Little Secret, Netflix’s latest holiday-themed romantic comedy misadventure starring Lindsay Lohan, I realized that I have never shipped two people less.
The film, which is now on Netflix and was directed by Stephen Herek of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, of all people, begins with a breakup. Avery (Lohan), still grieving the loss of her mother, is planning to move to London, leaving her family and, most importantly, her loving boyfriend Logan (Ian Harding) behind. Logan, feeling abandoned, tries to propose to Avery in the middle of her going-away party. Avery rejects him, Logan says some awful things to her about cowardice and how her mother would be disappointed, and they never speak again.
Fast-forward a decade (and the movie quite literally does this via a montage of historical events from the past ten years, putting the premieres of Netflix products like Stranger Things and Squid Game on the same level of importance as the death of Queen Elizabeth, the burning of Notre Dame, and the first photograph of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy) and both Avery and Logan are traveling to the homes of their respective romantic partners for Christmas. But there’s a catch: Avery’s new boyfriend and Logan’s new girlfriend are siblings, and the two of them realize, with chagrin, that the only way to survive the holidays staying under the same roof is to pretend that they’ve never met.
It’s got all the ingredients of a classic Shakespearean comedy of errors—but with none of the sauce. Every time Avery and Logan have to share the same air, all they do is snipe at each other. It’s clear the movie thinks this is an enemies-to-lovers type of plot, but the two main characters just seem like enemies the whole way through, until the third act requires them to have a change of heart in the eleventh hour. Not even a trip to a fir tree farm soundtracked by a song from Aliana Lohan (Lindsay’s sister) about a laughing Christmas tree is enough to melt the icy wall between them.
It’s not all bad, though. Lohan and Harding are supported by a murderer’s row of comedy veterans and character actors, each doing their damndest to elevate the material. Henry Czerny classes up the joint as Avery’s affable father. Tim Meadows pops up whenever the neighbors are invited to family dinner. Chris Parnell plays a veterinarian in one tense scene. Kristen Chenoweth is knife-sharp as the significant others’ domineering mother Erica, who takes an instant dislike to Avery and insists, Dorian Gray-like, that her face never ages in the annual family oil portrait.
Once these characters enter the mix the movie becomes bearable, to the point that you wish it was more about these strange folk and less about forcing two people who openly dislike each other to “give it another shot.” It’s rough when two rom-com protagonists have zero chemistry with each other, and it’s even rougher when their agonizing love story sours what ought to be the happiest time of year. There’s enough background action in Our Little Secret to keep it from being actually bad, but it’s not hard to imagine the charming Christmas rom-com we could have had if the two leads hadn’t been so desperate to out-Grinch each other.
