Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Our Little Secret’ On Netflix, The Latest Lindsay Lohan Movie in the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe

Lindsay Lohan returns for her latest Netflix Christmas movie with the cute-but-underwhelming Our Little Secret. In the film, Lohan plays Avery, a woman who joins her new boyfriend’s family for Christmas, only to realize that her first love, Logan (Ian Harding) is also spending the holiday there because he’s dating her boyfriend’s sister. The pair agree to keep their old romance a secret so it won’t make things weird, but guess what? It makes things weird.

OUR LITTLE SECRET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The film opens with an animated prologue narrated by Mission: Impossible actor Henry Czerny. Czerny plays Mitchell Becker, whose daughter is Avery (Lohan). In this animated sequence, Mitchell explains that in 1996, when his daughter Avery was a kid, she met her best friend Logan. As the years passed, friendship turned into romance, and when they became young adults, the two were a couple who seemed perfect together, and Logan was there for Avery through her darkest moment, the death of her mother. But in 2014, their romance came to an end when Avery accepted a job offer in London and Logan tried to prevent her from leaving.

The Gist: Avery and Logan, once so perfect for each other, broke up in dramatic, public fashion when, at Avery’s going away party as she was about to leave for London, Logan did the rash thing and proposed to her in an effort to keep her from moving away. It wasn’t just the unwanted and ill-timed proposal in front of all of their family and friends that caused their estrangement though, it was the fact that Logan called out Avery for running away from her life: her dad, her home, and Logan, in the wake of her mom’s death. Avery leaves for London and eventually becomes a successful consultant and Logan stays behind in Georgia and becomes a contractor working for a boss who has no desire to promote from within. After a decade of non-communication, they’re reunited when it turns out the people they’re both dating are siblings.

Avery is dating a business bro named Cam (Jon Rudnitsky), the oldest son of a wealthy couple named Erica and Leonard (Kristin Chenoweth and Dan Bucatinsky), and Logan is dating Cassie (Katie Baker), a 20-something student (who, its seems, is on a 7-year plan) who’s as empty as the Stanley tumblers she keeps slurping dry. There’s also a younger son named Callum (Jake Brennan) who’s generally acknowledged as the forgettable burnout. Avery and Logan both arrive with their significant others for the family’s festive holiday party a few days before Christmas, and they’re expected to stay in the family’s mansion over the course of the next several days.

Logan is already totally in with the family and they like him because what’s not to like? He’s kind and respectable and essentially just a Ken doll with a stable job. Avery, on the other hand, has been warned that Erica is very strict in her ways and has high expectations for her, and immediately Erica comes off as judgey and harsh toward Avery, for reasons that aren’t terribly clear. When Avery and Logan are introduced to one another, rather than acknowledging that they know one another and have a history, they pretend they’re meeting for the first time and then meet in the butler’s pantry to hatch a plan to keep up the ruse that they don’t know each other. It’ll be… OUR LITTLE SECRET.

Over the course of the next several days, the pair try to hide their history from everyone, but eventually, youngest brother Callum finds out and tries to blackmail them so he’ll keep the secret. That, in turn, reveals secrets that the entire family is hiding from one another, and Avery and Logan in turn seem like the most sane folks of the bunch.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? There are shades of holiday ensemble movies, like The Family Stone and Happiest Season, in here, with a dash of fake-relationship-hijinks, kind of like a reverse She’s All That or Anyone But You, where the terms of a couple’s relationship start off on false footing, only to have their ruse turn into true love.

Our Take: Our Little Secret feels like it was written with its script loosely plotted out, and then someone spun a Big Wheel of Wacky Elements and plugged them in for some color. Uh oh, the Big Wheel landed on “Avery gets high off of gummies that she didn’t know were laced with THC!” Hey, the Big Wheel landed on “High-as-a-kite Avery has to give a reading during the Christmas service at church and inadvertently leads the choir in a rousing rendition of Kool and the Gang’s ‘Celebration’!” And then there’s “Still super-high Avery gets the munchies, eats 12 of the special cookies Erica baked, blames it on Erica’s beloved dog, and is forced to bring the dog to the vet to get its stomach pumped!” The Big Wheel really knows how to squeeze whatever it can from those gummies!

Unfortunately, while each of these plot devices had the potential to be big laugh moments – and I’m certain the filmmakers expect that they will be – they all fall kind of flat because no one in any of these scenes seems to be having much fun playing them. The problem is that this film is stacked with names – great, wonderful, comedic actors – whose talents were, apparently, not added to the Big Wheel for consideration.

Nonetheless, the film is not an absolute dud, because while it’s not terribly funny, somehow there’s still some fun to it. I’m happy that these holiday movies are the next stop in Lohan’s career evolution because she’s a capable actress with plenty of talents. I’m also happy that the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe seems to exist to constantly reference itself and, now, to be one big Mean Girls joke. (Hot Frosty featured a clever joke where Lacey Chabert jokes that she went to high school with Lindsay Lohan, and in Our Little Secret, Lohan forces her boyfriend to admit that his old family friend Sophie is attractive with a riff on the classic Regina George line, saying, “So… you think she’s pretty?”)

As for the love story, while Lohan and Harding appear to be having fun with their silly secret, their relationship itself lacks some heat. And the entire time that Avery and Logan are attempting to keep their relationship hidden, it turns out that many of the other characters are hiding secrets that ultimately make everyone forget about Avery and Logan’s deception. It’s contrived and feels out of left field, but ultimately it creates an easy out for Avery and Logan to leave this family of nutters behind so they can finally get together. And while the film wants us to love that for them, as with everything else about this film, I just wish it felt more rewarding.

Sex and Skin: There’s some kissing onscreen, an affair that comes to light, and lots of implied cheating and relationships, but nothing beyond the PG realm.

Parting Shot: In an epilogue calling back to the opening scene, we see an animated version of Avery and Logan’s wedding. The two kiss, as Erica’s dog Veronica tugs at Avery’s dress.

Performance Worth Watching: I wish I could say that any one of the many Saturday Night Live alums cast in this film has a breakout role that will leave you in stitches, because why cast Tim Meadows or Jon Rudnitsky and then give them nothing funny to say or do? And why on Goddess’s green Earth would you cast Chris Parnell – a man whose headstone must read “Here lies Dr. Spaceman” because he should absolutely be canonized as Tracy Jordan’s unhinged doctor on 30 Rock – as a vet, only for him to play that vet completely straight? The only supporting role with anything meaty to do is Kristin Chenoweth as Erica, the icy, never-aging mother-in-law character, and yet even though she makes the best of what she’s given, the role is written as predictably as you’d imagine.

Memorable Dialogue: “Maybe you’re right, maybe we should go out there and tell them all that we dated, that way, for the next four days they can picture us having S-E-X!” Avery tells Logan, who initially wants to be honest about knowing Avery, but is persuaded to keep things quiet. Just something logical adults do!

Our Call: Not every recommendation we make is a made with resounding enthusiasm; this one is a reluctant STREAM IT, with the caveat that this is a fun story line, but you won’t be getting the best out of anyone involved. While I was entertained by Our Little Secret, there were so many missed opportunities that could have taken the film from “pretty good” to “pretty great.” Enjoy it for what it is, but enter with low expectations.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.