Full disclosure, my brain shut down leading to writing this article. It may make about as much sense as Netflix’s Irish Wish.
Where to start….
Probably from the beginning. Facebook ads.
I’m not the biggest or most savvy social media user. Most of my profiles lack photos and let’s face it, posts. But I do occasionally scroll through Facebook to pass time. That’s how I first learned of Netflix’s latest attempt at a romantic comedy Irish Wish. I wouldn’t say my interest levels were particularly high. I recognized a few actors in the trailer, obviously Lindsey Lohan for one. I’m a 90’s kid, so Lohan was in several movies I watched growing. I think my understanding of remakes happened because of The Parent Trap. As well as my learning that movies could be near unwatchable thanks to that Disney movie she was in with Tyra Banks. Life Size I think it was. I really don’t care enough to double check the name of it, that’s how much Irish Wish fried my brain. But we’re not there yet.
I’m aware of the problems Lohan faced a few years back, and to be honest I never really paid too much attention to it. I know it was a big deal to some, mostly because she had just come off of Mean Girls, but she appears to be doing much better and that’s all that matters. Speaking of Mean Girls, am I the only person that can’t remember a thing about that movie yet it’s somehow still a thing?
While watching the trailer my eyebrow quirked a bit at Ed Speleers, who just came off of an excellent showing on Star Trek: Picard. He was also in Eragon, which I may have been one of a handful of people to see in theaters, because dragons will never not be cool. Believe it or not, the actor that swayed me to ultimately give Irish Wish a try was Alexander Vlahos. The only thing I’ve seen him in was the second season of Sanditon and really enjoyed his performance in it. So after several days of holding off, I finally put on Irish Wish.
I’ve never regretted something so fast. It took about 30 seconds for me to groan out loud and seriously consider turning the movie off. The movie opens with a red carpet event with Vlahos’ character Paul Kennedy (get used to his name, because you hear it a lot. The whole name.) arriving in a sports car. A Lamborghini I think. Nice car. Also an easy way to show the character is rich. This was not my problem by the way. Lohan’s character, Maddie arrives across the street, why I do not know, the characters lock eyes and we understand quickly with no dialog this is the object of her affection. Then she closes the door to the taxi she arrived in and the scarf she was wearing gets stuck in the door as it drives away. This was the start to me second guessing continuing the movie. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to show us that she is clumsy or blinded to anything else when he’s around, but it was played almost like an attempt at a pratfall. There’s nothing worse than forced comedy. It’s also an over used trait for love-stuck heroines to literally fall head over heels for a guy. After this we discover that Paul Kennedy (yes I’m going to do it every time since every character in the movie does.) is an author and Maddie is his editor. Do book releases get red carpet treatment? I know they do books signing and readings for release, but a full on red carpet with photographers and all. Someone please tell me.
The scene at the launch party was hard to get through. The dialog was horrible and the acting was stale. The interaction with Maddie and her two friends just seemed forced. It was like 3 strangers talking for the first time. Anyway, Maddie has a chance to tell Paul Kennedy that she has feelings for him, but she doesn’t because surprise, she never speaks up for herself and lets others know how she feels about things. We are told this in a phone conversation with her mom, who is played by Jane Seymour. She’s too good for this. After all this Maddie introduces her friends to Paul Kennedy, and would you believe that one of them instantly falls in love with him. There was a moment I thought they were gonna jump each other’s bones. It would have been the most exciting thing to happen in the whole 90 minutes of the movie. Cut to months later, (at this point it felt like actual months in real life) and we’re in Ireland for Paul Kennedy and Emma’s (that’s the friends name that I might have had to look up.) wedding. The airport leads to our “meet cute” with Speleer’s James. They have the same suit case and fight over it and it bust open and she picks up his underwear. Yep groan number 3 or 4. I lost count.
Maddie and James end up on a bus together because we have to have our real love interest talk at some point before the weird magic stuff happens. I just want to take a second and ask another question. Maddie gets on the bus and asks the driver if he can drop her off at a specific spot, being the Kennedy estate. Is that a thing in Ireland? Can you just ask your bus driver to drop you off somewhere? I like to also point out she did not pay for the ride. We have a scene later with James at a bookstore and you see him tap his phone to pay. Back to the bus scene. I didn’t get a spark from them. The movie kind of hits you over the head about people being fated, but I saw more of something from Paul Kennedy and Emma at the book launch than our two romantic leads.
After what felt like a lifetime, we finally got to the actual plot of the movie. Maddie discovers a wishing chair and meets Saint Brigid, who grants Maddie’s wish to marry Paul Kennedy. I had to look up what the wish givers name was mostly because I was either not paying attention or it wasn’t made clear. But I went to the Wikipedia page for Saint Brigid and couldn’t find anything about her granting wishes. I could be wrong of course, I only did a quick scroll of the page, but why didn’t they find an Irish myth associated with wishes or make something up. But that’s the least of the movies problems after all we have more hijinks that need to happen.
Maddie got her wish. She wakes up to Paul Kennedy now being her fiancee and immediately falls over her suitcase which was lost at the airport. I’m not complaining about this. It may be the most logical thing to happen in the movie. Her best friend’s fiancee is in the same room with you taking a shower after you wake up following meeting some weird lady that claims to make wishes come true. Anyone who doesn’t freak out needs to have their head checked. The problem lies with how Maddie acts afterwards. She shows signs of guilt and in ways like she doesn’t want what she wished for, but then we have a scene of her running through the village in a wedding dress chasing Saint Brigid screaming that she doesn’t regret her wish. Maddie keeps Paul Kennedy at arms length yet is dead set on marrying him. There’s a sequence that has James, who is now the photographer for Maddie and Paul Kennedy’s wedding, taking her on a tour of the sights. It all just feels off. At parts they’re acting smitten like they’ve known each other for a while, but they just met. They haven’t even had more than a brief conversation, which was stilted at best. There’s a whole scene involving him teaching her to throw darts that leads to an almost kiss and her saying she’s getting married in two days. All these moments come off like the actors just got the script pages and are saying words. There wasn’t a moment with Maddie and James that I thought they actually felt the emotions they were conveying.
The ending was bizarre. It wasn’t that it was anti-climatic, which it was, it was like somebody realized nothing interesting happened the whole movie so things need to go down at the wedding. Maddie sees Paul Kennedy and Emma sharing a moment the night before the wedding, this of course happens after Maddie and James get into the classic argument love interests need to have before the happily ever after. Paul Kennedy happens to see Maddie and James sharing a moment just hours before tying the knot. This leads into an interesting moment between Maddie and Emma. From the beginning I never saw these two as friends. For starters they barely interacted and they didn’t seem like people that would hang out together. This scene kind of summed it up. Mainly because I’m not sure if they even knew how long they’ve been friends. Maddie confronts Emma about what she saw and I couldn’t tell if Maddie was coming to the realization that she was essentially ruining her friends life, or if she was still deciding if she was going through with the wedding. I mean she was wearing the dress, so at least a part of her was going to go through with it.
One thing I can’t wrap my head around is why didn’t Maddie go back to the wishing chair to undo the wish? Why did she make the effort to call the wedding off? Was it so we could get a terrible fight scene between the men? It was borderline slapstick and was in no way funny. Did Maddie somehow think that if she broke off the wedding things would work out for everyone? She said she wasn’t in love with Paul, but by making the wish it stands to reason that he loved her, even if she did propose. After the scene with Maddie and Emma, I fully expected to see Maddie rushing to undo the wish, yet it wasn’t until James rebuked her did she go. It wasn’t like they had a world-wind romance. It was a couple of days, and if she was beginning to understand people being fated then it would stand to reason that they could end up together in any universe.
At this point the wish is undone and Paul Kennedy and Emma are married. Oh and Paul Kennedy is now a dick. Yes it was not so subtlety hinted that Maddie wrote most of his book, but there were moments that he seemed to almost care about her in a way. If I had to guess, someone felt that we needed a reason to dislike him. I don’t know why it couldn’t have been played off as she realized that he wasn’t right for her and they weren’t meant to be. So much of the main part of Irish Wish was about fate and it would have been nice if it was just an acknowledgement that it wasn’t right. It doesn’t always have to end with the other man or woman being a horrible person.
I didn’t even talk about the sub plot with Jane Seymour. Honestly I would have watched a movie about her as a principal at that school. She was having a video call with Maddie while walking the halls of the high school, because that’s what principals do. The kids are just watching her as she walks and I got this feeling that they were terrified of her. Outside of those small moments at the school she was relegated to comic relief and it was clumsy at best.
There’s nothing worse than watching something and constantly asking why is this happening. I think the problem is, the movie felt rushed. Too much time was spent in the lead up to the wish that when it happened everything was going at full speed. None of the relationships felt believable, which is unfortunate because most of the actors are pretty charismatic. Romantic comedies are hard to do. There’s a balance between being heartfelt and humorous that is difficult to achieve. When I watch these types of movies I want to feel something. I watch action to shut down my brain, horror to feel scared (or grossed out) and, sci-fi to think. When the main characters are separated you want to feel sad along with them and happy when they reunite. I had no reaction other than confusion while viewing Irish Wish. Maybe someone will get something out of it. I certainly didn’t.
This is what I get for watching a trailer with no sound on.
Musings of an Introvert 