Our Little Secret (2024)

Netflix has spent several Decembers refining the Lindsay Lohan holiday confection, and Our Little Secret is the third such confection in a row. Avery (Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding) were sweethearts a decade ago in a small town. She chose London and a job over his proposal. They meet again at Christmas, each dating a different sibling from the Morgan family, and the plot requires them to bury their history under a roof full of strangers. Stephen Herek directs with the brisk competence of a man who has made many films and expects to make several more. The screws in this screwball comedy are only loosely tightened, but they hold.

The cultural inventory here is thin, and the thinness is the point. Avery drafts business proposals and is good at it, which supplies her with a profession, though the story still marches her toward marriage as the only finish line available. The ensemble includes Tim Meadows, Judy Reyes, and Ash Santos, who participate in the farce as ordinary relatives and romantic partners. No line of dialogue calls attention to them. A THC gummy sequence unfolds entirely as slapstick. Kristin Chenoweth plays the prospective mother-in-law as a Southern queen bee, and the film lets her be funny instead of instructive. Race, class, climate, and body image go unmentioned. This movie has no thesis. It has a seating chart.

Critics were unkind, which seems beside the point. The film drew a billion minutes of viewing in a single week and sat atop Netflix's charts for a fortnight, proving once more that the audience for a Christmas comedy wants tinsel, not a seminar. Approached as a cultural document, it registers as nearly inert. There is a working woman who is permitted competence, and there is a multiracial cast that never remarks upon itself, and that is the whole of its progressive account. Anyone searching this house for a message will find only cookies, a nervous dog, and a wedding at the end. The ledger stays close to empty, and the film seems content there.

Thematic tags: none apply. The picture is an original streaming release, not a sequel, remake, adaptation, or superhero property, it was not a theatrical box office number one, and it takes no Academy Awards and no basis in true events. It is simply a Christmas comedy, and it knows it.

{"review": "...", "thematic_tags": []}