Irish Wish – Lindsay Lohan Saves This Romcom

Irish Wish marks the second Netflix original starring Lindsay Lohan and sees her reteaming with her Falling for Christmas director Janeen Damian. When the love of her life gets engaged to her best friend, Maddie (Lohan) puts her feelings aside to be a bridesmaid at their wedding in Ireland. Days before the pair are set to get married, Maddie makes a spontaneous wish for true love and finds herself in an alternate reality where a chance encounter reminded her that sometimes one needs to be careful what they wish for. With her dream seemingly coming true, Maddie realizes that her soulmate might be someone else entirely. While the film may not be a new romcom classic by any means, and would have likely been a Hallmark or Lifetime film is not for Lohan’s involvement, Lohan’s charm and magnetic screen presence makes for a breezy watch as long for romcom fans. Otherwise, it will almost definitely become a punishing roughly 90-minute ordeal.

The main reason Irish Wish works in any which way is because of Lohan who’s great as Maddie, proving she hasn’t lost a beat over the years. Though not the greatest script in the world, in fact it’s full of bad dialogue, endless romcom cliches, and quite a bit of unfunny humour, however, Lohan elevates it when she is on screen and adds a genuine believability despite certain situations that felt the exact opposite. She simply has such an immense likability and charm to her that makes it easy to sympathize with her, and Lohan is well suited here because of how natural she comes across. Also helping the film’s case is the strong chemistry with the entire, especially her and Speleers who is good here as James. The central romance between Maddie and James is honestly pretty cute, and with their shared likeability, one can’t help but to want to see them be together. While the film doesn’t do much with its alternate reality premise, it doesn’t feel as silly or shoehorned in as it could have. Above all else, like the best romcoms, it has a ton of heart and isn’t afraid to show it.

As mentioned, fans of romcoms are sure to enjoy this one but for those who are not, then they should stay as far away as humanly possible because it will test one’s patience, or possibly worse. Like most romcoms, this one is insanely predictable, filled with cliches, while most audiences will see every single story beat from a mile away, before they happen or are even suggested. There isn’t a single surprise to be found here, the film wraps up way too nearly, and isn’t the most well film with some questionable dialogue and humour at times. Not to beat this up too much, it’s not the most well made film in the world, and one only worth recommending to a select few.

At the end of the day, Irish Wish is a tough one to talk about because while it is not great, it’s still perfectly enjoyable for those in its target audience and gets a lot of mileage out of Lindsay Lohan’s charming lead performance and her chemistry with Ed Speleers. About on par with her previous Netflix original, so those who enjoyed that one will feel good about this latest offering. That being said, while it is not necessarily a good movie, those who like romcoms and have some time to kill, it is not the worst way to spend 90 or so minutes.

still courtesy of Netflix

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/