Does Netflix know it’s 2024? That it’s OK to have women that don’t think terribly of themselves? I guess not. Let’s talk about the new Lindsay Lohan movie, Irish Wish.
Maddie (Lohan) is a book editor who dreams of writing her own book. The most recent book she edited was written by Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos), who she is absolutely in love with. However, Paul is about to marry one of Maddie’s best friends, Emma (Elizabeth Tan). As the group, along with other best friend Heather (Ayesha Curry), travel to Ireland for the wedding, everything starts going wrong for Maddie. The airport loses her luggage and it takes so much time to fill out the paperwork that she has to take the bus to Paul’s house. It’s on the bus that she meets nature photographer James Thomas (Ed Speleers). The next day, while the soon-to-be-wed couple go out rowing, Maddie accidentally makes a wish to Saint Brigid (Dawn Bradfield) that she would be the one marrying Paul, not Emma. Once the wish comes true, Maddie finds out that she didn’t really want what she thought she did.
The Maddie character really annoyed me. She was quite incapable of doing anything, except for writing obviously. The whole opening of the movie is Maddie making googly eyes at Paul but being too scared to tell him that she likes him. She’s apparently so scared of her feelings that she doesn’t even tell her two best friends. Not in the bar, not in the car home, not at any point during Emma and Paul’s 7-month relationship. Oh wait, she does tell her mother played by Jane Seymour. I have no idea why she is even in the movie. She doesn’t do anything.
Then, when Maddie’s wish comes true, she does nothing to stand up for herself. At the last minute, Paul’s mother wants her to ditch the wedding dress that she picked out (with her mother…off-screen, of course) in order to wear the family wedding dress. I think Heather said something like “But what about your wedding dress?” and Maddie just kinda shrugged it off. There’s another scene where Paul asks her to go bicycle riding. Maddie doesn’t want to do it but she lets Paul bully her into it.
From what I can tell, Maddie had a crush on Paul because he is cute. He’s a terrible person and I’m not sure why she didn’t see that when she worked with him. While I’m not going to spoil his biggest flaw, yes, she absolutely should have known he was awful and she probably should have outright hated him instead of loving him.
Is there a good part to this movie? James was probably the only redeemable character in the whole thing. He was better to Maddie but I’m not sure he is enough to actually save the entire movie. Instead, I think I’m going to chalk this up to another terrible romcom and put it out of my mind. There have to be better romcoms out there to watch.
Rating: D