Wedding bells often demand us to make some of the most important decisions of our lives. Decisions I imagine that become a lot easier when you’re presented with your dream options – hunky partners in an idyllic foreign land, as you and your friends sip drinks while wearing sundresses. Netflix’s Irish Wish sets out to answer a question no one was asking – how by the numbers could we make a movie if we threw the tropes popularized by Frank Capra & Nora Ephron into an AI blender? The result is a churned out sludge of been there/done that where headliner Lindsay Lohan desperately tries to maneuver her movie star charm through an avalanche of cliches and shoddy acting.
Lohan stars as Madeline, a book editor who’s in love with her writing partner – famous author Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos). However, Kennedy is oblivious to her yearning, instead setting his sights on Madeline’s friend in a destination Ireland wedding. Madeline is unfulfilled in her career, lonely, and said to not have dated “since a year ago when you started that book with Paul.” She ends up being the 5th wheel on a pre-wedding boat ride as they run out of room on the boat, so her friends go without her. They banish this woman to playing with flowers and shit. That’s when she’s given an unexpected opportunity to change her destiny.
As I watched Irish Wish, I was temporarily conflicted on how to feel about it. On the one hand, it is not very good for reasons we’ll get to. On the other hand, the film’s ineptitude is almost interesting, both in how safe and aggressively derivative it all is, as well as how strangely the actors are deployed here. Take Ayesha Curry, for example, Lohan’s real-life friend who stars here as the typical romantic comedy best friend. Curry, despite her celebrity, has only acted in small roles, and it shows. Yet her scenes are weirdly engaging in an awkward way. Make no mistake, it’s an awful performance, full of overracting with bizarre choices and line readings. But it’s entertainingly awful. My favorite contribution from her is “The happy couple is taking us on a picnic!” Print doesn’t do the absurdity justice. She essentially just exists to “You go, girl!” Madeline, but she barely has anything going on herself. Her days always sound so boring; the most excitement she sees is the aforementioned picnic, and that one time she was going to pick orchards (the orchard picking is never shown, for better or worse).
Veteran actor Jane Seymour occasionally pops in as Madeline’s mom… and as of this writing, I still have no idea why she was in the movie. She has nary an impact on the plot, and she’s physically displaced from the principal characters. You could tell me all of her scenes were filmed for a different movie, and I’d believe you.
Meanwhile, Vlahos turns in a surprisingly solid performance. Solid relative to the material, and what we have to compare him to, but he’s one of the few bright spots who actually shows a good sense of comedic timing, even if it is limited by the unimaginative writing. However, the character’s arc, which originally seems to upend the cliches of the “other man” in a romcom, is completely torpedoed in the last third of the movie in a disastrous left turn that nukes any sublety or maturity the script may have originally been going for. Instead, whatever depth the character may have had is mortgaged for seemingly no sound reason. As a result, the only thing I’ll remember from this character is him writing a message to one of the author’s fans, stating: “Gertrude, that’s a beautiful name.” You lying bastard.
The screenplay, written by Kirsten Hansen, is a mixed bag of cliches and odd lines. Some of the gems include “Them’s fighting words!” and “Have some champagne, it’s working for me.” There’s a side character with a heavy accent who absolutely butchers the word ‘close.’ Every other word in their sentence came out fine, but for some reason, ‘close’ had a machete taken to it – strange. This is also a movie where one of the leading men, while thinking of Madeline, let’s out a blissful sigh and smirk straight out of an eHarmony commercial. They thought they were cooking with that reaction.
I hate to criticize an individual department, for I trust all crew members work extremely hard, but I have to take this movie’s costume department to task. If their goal was to make Lindsay Lohan look like a movie star, they did not succeed. Early on, she’s wearing a green/striped blazer over a frumpled white dress shirt, with jeans and tennis shoes. You could say that maybe this is part of the storytelling, to get Madeline across as a relatable underdog. But nope, as the costuming doesn’t get much better. The groom’s attire is trash, and even the wedding dresses are poor. You could find better off the rack at Macy’s Bridal.
The production design, while imperfect, is at least not terrible. There is some awful green screen early on that looks so bad you’d think they did it on purpose. But once the movie actually gets to Ireland, the imagery gets a little more crisp. I still wouldn’t say you get to learn anything new about Ireland culture, other than we love beer, amirite? There’s some fun editing, including a shot where Madeline is slingshotted back to her bedroom by her Fairy Godbitch in the movie’s most (and maybe only) amusing scene.
Given how lackluster the production is, does Lohan’s star power make up for it? Er… no. Like, she’s Lindsay Lohan in every scene, great, that may be all that some viewers need. But it alone doesn’t make a movie. She’s not that damn charming.
The film advertises itself as being 91 minutes long, although you shouldn’t think that means the ride is smooth sailing as the movie feels more akin to 2.5 hours. There was a point, maybe an hour into the movie, give or take, where I experienced a strong urge to check how many minutes were left. I resisted this urge as the exercise seemed pointless, for any time remaining would have been too much.
I suppose the movie would have been enjoyable if it had been more self-aware. Instead, the film speed runs every romcom staple you can think of. By the time you get to “A book falls between two would-be lovers during a Meet Cute” and realize you’re only 15 minutes in, you know you’re in for a tough time. Sincerity in movies is greatly needed, and not everything needs to be lampshaded. But Irish Wish is so shallow/vapid/insipid that it could use a knowing dose of tongue in cheek humor that would allow for more clever jokes and payoffs. Instead, the film takes itself more seriously than the material should justify. There’s a sequence where pensive music plays as the camera scans stone statues. A score that wouldn’t be out of place in a telenovela crescendos as Lohan cries like a baby. At one point, a character asks Madeline what she plans to do, which the plucky protagonist responds (without a shred of irony) “To write my own story.” It this was a live play the crowd would have booed.
Irish Wish may provide fleeting moments of laughter (the comedy is unintentional), but it’s mostly just a waste of time when you could be watching almost anything else. The film arrives nonchalantly, then exits on a whimper during a “beautiful” moment, while a song that sucks plays in the background. I imagine this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Lohan/Netflix/romcom industrial complex. But if you’re going to go for the lowest common denominator, at least try to have some fun with it.
