I should state that I am not the target audience for this movie, but I am not averse to the occasional well made rom-com.
This isn't either well-made or funny or particularly romantic, but it has a tepid charm to it if you're willing to set your expectations extremely low and may appeal to a younger audience. It certainly has little to say to adults, being essentially a preteen girls fantasy, yet not really appropriate for that audience either.
However, if you're looking for something undemanding with some pretty scenery it might pass the time.
I haven't seen Lindsay Lohan in anything since 2005's Herbie movie and I barely recognised her. It is well known that actresses in their late-thirties to fifties struggle to find decent leading roles, however Lohan isn't doing herself any favours by being cast in a role she seems too old for. Certainly people in their late thirties can struggle to find a suitable partner, but most of them have lived a little by that point.
Lohan's character, Maddie Kelly, is an unassertive editorial assistant who falls for a famous writer she works for and has just gathered the courage to declare her feelings to him when he falls for someone else.
It is never made clear what Maddie has being doing with her life up to this point.
She doesn't appear to have had any previous relationships, lacks the confidence to pursue her ambitions, is totally incapable of recognising that the object of her affection is a shallow, narcissistic, domineering a***hole and doesn't appear to have any friends of any substance. Despite all this, she seems perfectly content.
When confronted with a semi-nude man who she apparently has the hots for, she recoils as if having never been in that position before.
She still relys on her mother for advice and is easily pushed into situations she is uncomfortable with.
All this might be believable if she was in her late teens/early twenties and this was a coming-of-age tale, but without a backstory to account for her situation it just seems odd at nearly forty to be acting like this.
To add to this incrogruity, we are told Maddie is a talented author, but the only indication that she writes is a single scene in which she sits at a computer and we read on the screen 'Untitled Novel, Chapter One..' and then a blank screen as if she is struggling to come up with something...'Once upon a time' perhaps?
Similarly, when asked who her favourite author is she claims 'James Joyce', which makes you wonder why she is helping to write trashy romance novels and not astoundingly inventive and complex literary masterpieces - it is almost as if the screenwriters simply googled 'famous Irish author' and thought 'never heard of him but he'll do'.
It is at moments like these that Irish Wish is unintentionally amusing.
Putting that aside, Lohan does have screen presence so it's a shame that her character is poorly written, the dialogue so lacking in spark or wit and the plot entirely predictable and generic.
The introduction, fairly early on, of a low-fantasy element does allow the set designers to almost get away with some very corny scenes of Ireland with fake looking environments and almost insulting cliches about the irish, but the magical is merely a plot device here and is never played out to it's full potential.
The supporting cast do little to help matters. Whilst there is some miniscule chemistry between Maddie and James, played by Ed Speelers, they hardly set the screen alight and are let down again by weak dialogue. Meanwhile, the predictable spat between two of the main characters lacks either humour or believable motive.
Every now and then Maddie randomly trips over - maybe this was where the laughs were meant to be inserted?
Jane Seymour pops up as Maddie's mother, but is curiously underwritten and never appears on screen with Lohan suggesting her inclusion might have been a last minute one. Paul Kennedy plays the author mentioned above, but his character is too thinly sketched to be anything other than a prop for plot development, whilst Ayesha Curry has no discernible character at all - merely serving to add occasional exposition (and more cynically, perhaps, diversity).
I could tell, two minutes in, that Irish Wish wasn't going to be up to much, but saw it through to the end, so you don't have to.
Irish Wish shares a lot in common with Bridget Jones' Diary ( very mild spoiler alert: clumsy woman seeking career recognition falls for inappropriate domineering boss and is fought over by two men) but makes that film look like a cinematic masterpiece.
This isn't either well-made or funny or particularly romantic, but it has a tepid charm to it if you're willing to set your expectations extremely low and may appeal to a younger audience. It certainly has little to say to adults, being essentially a preteen girls fantasy, yet not really appropriate for that audience either.
However, if you're looking for something undemanding with some pretty scenery it might pass the time.
I haven't seen Lindsay Lohan in anything since 2005's Herbie movie and I barely recognised her. It is well known that actresses in their late-thirties to fifties struggle to find decent leading roles, however Lohan isn't doing herself any favours by being cast in a role she seems too old for. Certainly people in their late thirties can struggle to find a suitable partner, but most of them have lived a little by that point.
Lohan's character, Maddie Kelly, is an unassertive editorial assistant who falls for a famous writer she works for and has just gathered the courage to declare her feelings to him when he falls for someone else.
It is never made clear what Maddie has being doing with her life up to this point.
She doesn't appear to have had any previous relationships, lacks the confidence to pursue her ambitions, is totally incapable of recognising that the object of her affection is a shallow, narcissistic, domineering a***hole and doesn't appear to have any friends of any substance. Despite all this, she seems perfectly content.
When confronted with a semi-nude man who she apparently has the hots for, she recoils as if having never been in that position before.
She still relys on her mother for advice and is easily pushed into situations she is uncomfortable with.
All this might be believable if she was in her late teens/early twenties and this was a coming-of-age tale, but without a backstory to account for her situation it just seems odd at nearly forty to be acting like this.
To add to this incrogruity, we are told Maddie is a talented author, but the only indication that she writes is a single scene in which she sits at a computer and we read on the screen 'Untitled Novel, Chapter One..' and then a blank screen as if she is struggling to come up with something...'Once upon a time' perhaps?
Similarly, when asked who her favourite author is she claims 'James Joyce', which makes you wonder why she is helping to write trashy romance novels and not astoundingly inventive and complex literary masterpieces - it is almost as if the screenwriters simply googled 'famous Irish author' and thought 'never heard of him but he'll do'.
It is at moments like these that Irish Wish is unintentionally amusing.
Putting that aside, Lohan does have screen presence so it's a shame that her character is poorly written, the dialogue so lacking in spark or wit and the plot entirely predictable and generic.
The introduction, fairly early on, of a low-fantasy element does allow the set designers to almost get away with some very corny scenes of Ireland with fake looking environments and almost insulting cliches about the irish, but the magical is merely a plot device here and is never played out to it's full potential.
The supporting cast do little to help matters. Whilst there is some miniscule chemistry between Maddie and James, played by Ed Speelers, they hardly set the screen alight and are let down again by weak dialogue. Meanwhile, the predictable spat between two of the main characters lacks either humour or believable motive.
Every now and then Maddie randomly trips over - maybe this was where the laughs were meant to be inserted?
Jane Seymour pops up as Maddie's mother, but is curiously underwritten and never appears on screen with Lohan suggesting her inclusion might have been a last minute one. Paul Kennedy plays the author mentioned above, but his character is too thinly sketched to be anything other than a prop for plot development, whilst Ayesha Curry has no discernible character at all - merely serving to add occasional exposition (and more cynically, perhaps, diversity).
I could tell, two minutes in, that Irish Wish wasn't going to be up to much, but saw it through to the end, so you don't have to.
Irish Wish shares a lot in common with Bridget Jones' Diary ( very mild spoiler alert: clumsy woman seeking career recognition falls for inappropriate domineering boss and is fought over by two men) but makes that film look like a cinematic masterpiece.