WHEN IT FIRST emerged that Netflix would be putting out a romcom set in Ireland, two days before St Patrick’s Day, Irish audiences will inevitably have thought: “Wow, we’ve finally made it.”
Hot on the heels of Cillian Murphy completing his veritable clean sweep of the awards circuit, it’s another momentous occasion in Irish movie history. The world’s largest streaming service has turned its pitiless gaze on our humble island and romcommed us.
Irish Wish stars Lindsey Lohan in the most Lohan of roles, a shy and apparently talented literary editor who has fallen in unrequited love with one of her clients, Paul, who is engaged to Lohan’s best friend. There’s also a handsome Englishman thrown into the bargain, thus completing the classic love triangle.
It is a movie without any pretensions, similar in theme and tone and just about every other qualitative metric to the Princess Swap series starring Vanessa Anne Hudgens. The characterisation is thin, the jokes are not really jokes, the plot points can all be predicted well in advance. That’s all fine. We know that going in. Nobody is watching Irish Wish because they think they’re getting Citizen Kane. No, this is Hallmark TV, set in Ireland.
As soon as one of Lohan’s friends finds out that Paul is Irish, her eyes light up. “Does he have a sexy accent?” she asks. That’s right, another major motion picture fetishising Irish men, just like Oppenheimer. How are the rest of us supposed to shoulder this burden?
The “Irish” love interest is played by Welsh actor Alexander Vlahos, whose accent is keenly reminiscent of Aidan Gillen in the latter seasons of Game of Thrones, after he had given up and started talking like a pirate.
The English love interest, because the world is not ready for two Irish love interests, is also played by a British man. Ed Speleers plays an aspiring nature photographer who’s in the west to cover a sheep-shearing contest. It would be nice to decry this particular plot point as ignorant and stereotyping, but unfortunately Donegal did host the 2023 international sheep-shearing championships. We’re not beating the allegations on this one.
The film follows Lohan’s Madeline to Ireland, where Paul is getting married to one of her best friends. Upon arriving in Ireland we learn that the best way to get to his ancestral Anglo-Irish big house is via Knock Airport. At no point does any character even say the word “apparition,” which feels like a major dereliction of duty. While the film is set in Ireland, it does very little to actually illustrate what makes Ireland any different from any small American hometown where this story could have just as easily taken place.
After seeing the Cliffs of Moher, Lohan’s character says “I think I just stepped into a James Joyce novel,” which is sort of like an Irish character wandering around Times Square and saying they feel like they’re in The Grapes of Wrath or the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Moments later, Lohan says that she doesn’t like beer, prompting an Irish waiter to joke “I wouldn’t say that too loud around these parts! You’d get locked up for treason!” You know the way we talk. The closest the film comes to acknowledging the Irish language is in the bilingual signs at Knock Airport’s lost baggage.
Given Ireland’s outsized cultural cache at the current moment, it seems an open goal missed by Netflix to produce a film set in Ireland, filmed in Ireland, but almost aggressively designed to avoid intersecting with Irish culture in any meaningful way.
The primary exception to this cultural deadening is the appearance of St Brigid, who sets the plot in motion by showing Lohan’s character how to use a ‘wishing chair’. Brigid is played by Irish actress Dawn Bradfield, who after some headscratching and eventual Googling you will realise you recognise as the winner of the Lovely Girls contest in Father Ted. Brigid comfortably steals the show, and if Netflix are really interested in tapping into the Irish market any further then they should consider a spin-off.
Irish Wish probably does fall into that rarified space of films that are bad enough to be worth watching, especially for an Irish audience. All the same, it’s hard to recommend rewarding Netflix for this kind of behaviour. With Irish Wish, it seems as though Netflix are banking on the appeal of scenic overhead shots of Irish pubs and landscapes held together by the most low-effort script you can imagine. If a modicum of research went into this film, it’s not possible to tell.
Nothing would please an Irish audience more than a bad Netflix romcom set in Ireland. All we ask is that you commit.
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