[contains light spoilers (kinda)]
Irish Wish (2024) – Genre
This newsletter primarily reviews films from the 20th century, but I do believe we can all agree that there is no way in hell I was passing up the chance to review Lindsay Lohan’s new Netflix rom-com Irish Wish (2024) for our Wedding March Madness series. If you are unfamiliar with this film and you like to consume absolute garbage movies about garbage people doing garbage things like the little raccoon you are, get to Netflix now and then come back for this review.[1] If you’re like “why in any dimension of reality would I agree to that?” because you fancy yourself not a little raccoon, may I entice your sensible curiosities with another review of Irish Wish entitled, “Irish Wish Is a Crypto-Fascist, AI-Generated Harbinger of Doom”? Yea. Now you’re into it, aren’t you? You want to know what Lindsay Lohan did to be a harbinger of doom, you little raccoon, you. Get your little mitts ready because we are dumpster diving today, babes.
And to make it even more enticing, since I’m already breaking the 20th century rule, I’m also breaking the Review Roulette wheel and deciding the approach for us. We’re going to raccoon into the film with my actual real life research expertise in Christmas films. As Rachel Handler says in that “harbinger of doom” review from Vulture,
Irish Wish is not technically a Netflix Christmas movie, but it shares all of the genre’s hallmarks: It’s vaguely holiday-themed (I’m inferring the St. Patrick’s Day connection based on the film’s release date and the fact that it has no other reason to take place in Ireland), everyone in it dresses like they have only ever shopped on amazon.com on Cyber Monday, there is no sex or sexual chemistry to speak of despite the entire plot hinging on the possibility thereof, and every scene is lit and color coded like a poorly managed children’s hospital.
And I took that personally. Handler is absolutely correct in this assessment of Netflix Christmas movies being sexless, uncomfortably bright like a toy store, loosely connected to the holiday, and costumed by a randomise button. I want to go a bit further though and discuss this as a throughline from The Formula™.
The Formula™ is the tone and aesthetic and story beats and characters you’ve come to expect in all of these holiday rom-coms that cost about 20 bucks and a chocolate milk to make. I discuss the origins of this formula in my dissertation and in a forthcoming chapter (in Under the Mistletoe: Essays on Holiday Romance in Popular Culture - pre-order for January 2025 if you want!). To summarise haphazardly: in the super socially conservative 1950s, for reasons I get into elsewhere, Christmas movies moved away from traditional complex stories of structural inequality (A Christmas Carol-esque films such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)) and towards happy, bright, simple rom-coms (White Christmas (1954)). And in this simplification of the narrative of Christmas romance, a formula was developed that is tried and tested and turning out new movies for Lifetime, Hallmark, Netflix, Amazon, and the Great American Family Network at record pace (potentially at an accelerated rate in future due to AI’s ability to regurgitate The Formula™).
So, let’s talk about The Formula™ and focus in on how Irish Wish lives up to it, especially to the conservative cues. So, the story is that Maddie (Lindsay Lohan) is an editor for Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos) and in a real Bridget Jones, The Holiday kind of publishing romance story, Maddie is in love with Paul and lets him take credit for her work and writing and ideas. Exploitation of her skills because she has feelings for him, and he can profit off of that. So, Maddie’s best friend Emma (Elizabeth Tan) falls into a whirlwind romance with Paul and within three months, they are getting married in Ireland. Maddie, desperate to be the one marrying Paul, makes a wish to St. Brigid (Dawn Bradfield) who, for some Lucky Charms ass reason, is always looking over her right shoulder and scampering away, slightly bent, and going “hoho” like the Pillsbury Doughboy when she’s not mischievously slapping a “cancelled” sticker on a sheep festival sign because her magic wasn’t powerful enough to just cancel the multi-dimensional sheep festival for real apparently, and then our true love interest doesn’t even follow up with the organisers, he just accepts the festival is cancelled and he no longer has to work at it because of this no-magic ass sticker. Anyway, Brigid grants the wish, it’s a real It’s a Wonderful Life, genie gone wrong, “you don’t know what you actually want, I’ll show you what you need” sequence. Meanwhile, Maddie is falling in love with the guy she met on like Thursday, James Thomas (Ed Speleers).
The timeline thing is insane. We are told that Maddie has known and been exploited by Paul for around a year, which should be a decently long time to know if you are compatible with a person on even basic conversational levels. I’m not saying you should know you want to marry them, but you should just be able to tell if you can have a simple conversation together, and these two absolutely cannot. One problem here is that Maddie is a flat, flat character. She is 1-dimensional, agrees to anything that will not raise conflict, and the only character revelations we get about 2/3 into the film is that she likes James Joyce, she likes nature, and she enjoys a bad dance after a sip of white wine. So, Maddie not being able to tell that she and Paul are incompatible is forgiven because she is a people pleaser type woman who is afraid of confrontation and will do anything to make sure her man does not feel challenged.
James, on the other hand, (whom I should say is played by the charismatic and good actor Ed Speleers – like he tried so hard to make this movie not terrible) is the striking stranger who encourages her to speak up for herself – and then immediately apologises for gently suggesting she might have agency when she does. She has known James for two days and that is long enough for her to uproot her life and decide their meeting was fate. So, Maddie needed a new man who was slightly better for her to tell her that her old man was exploiting her and that she deserved better.
This portrayal of a 1-dimensional woman who needs a man to speak sense into her is the oldest trope of these formulaic holiday films, with one very strikingly similar example being Holiday Affair (1949). The idea that a woman cannot decide her own feelings without the input of a man, into whose arms she runs at the end of the film to begin a new loveless, sexless relationship, is in support of socially conservative and traditional gender roles. This is further supported by the sexlessness in the film. Although Maddie has been desperate for intimacy with Paul, when the wish is granted she shield her eyes to protect his modesty, refuses to touch him, and animatedly dodges his attempts to kiss her throughout the entire film resulting in lasting physical injuries for Paul. While this works in the plot as Maddie being uncomfortable with the reality she chose to marry her best friend’s fiancé, it also sends the message that it would be inappropriate for them to kiss or touch or be naked together prior to the wedding.
The fashion in the film, while a travesty in its own right, is also in support of these conservative ideals. The women’s clothing is generally quite modest: predominantly long sleeves, cardigans, floor length dresses, neck-high blouses, and with only a few knee length skirts at the shortest. No cleavage on set to be sure. This look is a throwback to that 1950s, Stepford Wives chic with a denim jacket thrown over a cheaply made, vintage-looking top. (For anyone who knows me in real life, I am aware this is similar to my own style, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it inherently. If you like a nice swing skirt and mini cardigan, rock on, babe, I bet you look amazing.) When this style, however, is mixed with conservative ideological cues in the film that amount to The Formula™ and follow those same story beats, that’s when we have to perk up and think about the media we are consuming.
I have said it before, and I’ll say it a million times again: there is absolutely nothing wrong with watching garbage movies that pass the time and provide escapist entertainment. I absolutely love that for you and for me. There is something wrong with watching them uncritically, though, and even if your critical view is just reading something like this review or that Great American Family thread linked above to remind yourself that conservative ideology is a dangerous thing to put into passively-consumed media such as this, grand. The acknowledgment is half the battle. When we are in an era of growing Christo-fascism and Christo-nationalism, it is imperative that we are aware of the media that can quietly support the socially conservative ideals of those groups such as a simple woman who needs men to make decisions for her while thinking they were her ideas, or an engaged couple who cannot even kiss one another on the cheek without discomfort feeling shame for their own desires, or clothing that supports modesty culture.
These formulaic holiday films are entertaining. They’re fun to laugh at or with, they’ve got familiar tropes, no surprises, similar characters and actors across the board. Seeing Lindsay – an icon from my own adolescence now in a similar stage of life to me experiencing dramatic vistas and romantic rain – in these types of films is how they get us to keep watching, invested in the lifecycle of a former child star we grew up with now reflecting fantasies of our age-group. It is good to enjoy them if you enjoy them, but we all have to enjoy responsibly in this concerning, precipitous era. Always raccoon responsibly.
[1] All raccoon terminology has been developed by my best friend Dr. Susannah Ashton and me to describe our reality tv watching, Hollywood gossip reading, rom-com devouring habits. No pleasure is guilty, but it can be raccoony.