IRISH WISH (2024): Mediocrity Can Be Fun! (Within Reason)

It’s difficult to convey the enjoyment derived from watching a movie like Irish Wish (2024) to the uninitiated. Halfway through, I took a break to regale my husband with some of the most egregious moments thus far— defining the word “wish” at the beginning, water mixed with water having more chemistry than the leads, the whole James Joyce moment, Saint Brigid’s…everything, but especially her wardrobe. I’m sorry, he said. It sounds awful. Friends, I gasped. Where has he been, lo these many years, I have been toiling away at my reviews of mediocre rom-coms? No, no, I said, with great patience. It’s exactly what I hoped for. Because, look—best case scenario in the year of our Most Lauded and Hated Streaming 2024—a movie starring Lindsay Lohan making a magical wish in Ireland to marry her best friend’s financé, but actually finding true love in a most unexpectedly expected place, is going to result in a watchable mediocre rom-com that is easy on the brain cells, comforting in the right ways, and a to joy to pick apart. And this absolutely fits that bill.

If the meaning of the word wish has somehow escaped you—fear not!—because this movie has got you covered with one of the more pessimistic interpretations of the word I’ve heard: “to want something that cannot or probably will not happen.” Yeowch. So maybe they did need to define it for us after all. Anyway, what Maddie Kelly (Lindsay Lohan) wishes is that famous author Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos) would pick up on all the signals she’s been putting out and realize that they’re meant to be together. Instead, when he says he has something important to talk to her about at his fancy book launch, it’s just that he wants her to put her own writing on hold (again) so she can edit another of his best-selling and worldwide hit books. And by edit he really means mostly write for him. Maddie agrees because she’s always so agreeable and self-effacing and, of course, because she’s secretly in love with him, though the movie gives us absolutely zero clues as to WHY she might be into this guy—except that maybe she likes his face? When Maddie tells him he looks great, he just adjusts his hair and says thanks and then goes off to meet the adoring press—so much press! Sure, he gives a shout out to Maddie, but that’s the bare minimum he could do. Maddie has kept her love so close to her chest that she hasn’t even told her very best friends, Heather (Ayesha Curry) and Emma (Elizabeth Tan), about how she’d really like Paul to be the fountain pen to her inkwell. Only her mother (Jane Seymour), who keeps encouraging her to just tell the man already, knows the deep dark truth. So it’s not really anyone’s fault when Emma and Paul have an instant connection that night as he helps her fix a wayward false eyelash. Ah, the way love blooms.

Before you or Maddie know it, they’re all headed to Ireland to celebrate Paul and Emma’s nuptials. “It all happened so fast,” says Heather. “Like whiplash,” deadpans Maddie. How on earth do her friends not realize something is amiss? I mean, I’m an ever-flowing font of benevolent snark, but even my dearly beloveds would start to show concern if I said something like that.

At the airport, Maddie gets into a scuffle over a suitcase  that she is just sure is hers with—and you’re never going to believe this—a Genetically Blessed man. It turns out to be his, which she discovers when the sucker splits open and she pulls out his plaid boxer shorts thinking they’re her favorite plaid skirt. Is this why she wears so much plaid in the rest of the movie? To recall this key moment? No, I’m sure it’s just because it’s Ireland. This sets the two of them off on the wrong foot, so it’s not unexpected that after Maddie lodges her claim with lost baggage that the two end up sitting next to each other on Brigid’s Bus Service (Oooh! Foreshadowing!), which conveniently stops right outside Paul’s enormous family home. (My understanding is that there is some rather squishy stuff when it comes to geography and the bus ride, but that’s only to be expected when it comes to an on-location Netflix rom-com where the country is more bucolic backdrop than an actual factual part of the story.) 

On the bus ride, where Paul’s book is oh-so-conveniently hanging out of Maddie’s bag, we learn that the Genetically Blessed stranger is James Thomas (Ed Speleers), an Emotionally Unavailable, nomadic nature photographer who absolutely disdains Paul Kennedy’s writing. I have to wonder why exactly she would still be reading the book she largely wrote and edited? Wouldn’t she be ready to move onto something else at this point? No matter, these two have a tetchy kind of conversation that is largely expository and sets things up for their later interactions.

Have I mentioned Paul’s family house is huge? Like, ginormous. I don’t know what his family does, but I’m pretty sure it’s not legal because the heating bill alone has got to be astronomical. Maddie meets Paul’s brother Kory (Matty McCabe) and Heather tells her that “he’s cute,” because this is the kind of movie where it’s better if things are explained rather than shown. Maddie is kind of clumsy and out-of-place in the Kennedy home, whereas Olivia fits in like a missing, and very fancy, puzzle piece. This kind of awkward, bungling character doesn’t feel totally in Lindsay Lohan’s wheelhouse, or at least she seems very stiff and uncomfortable. That said, none of the leads have chemistry at all. It feels very much like everyone is making their own movie in tandem. 

Maddie, Kory, Heather, Emma, and Paul go off on a very picturesque trip that Paul planned, which includes row boats. Maddie bows out, deciding to stay on shore, where her fate will be changed forEVAR!!! She finds her way to an old stone bench, where she takes a video call from her mother. While they’re talking, she tells her mother how she wishes she’d taken her advice all those months ago and told Paul how she felt. Her mother tells her to think of it as a lesson learned, which is solid advice for the future. And Maddie says that it’s “too late now. It’s not like I can tell Paul that I wish he were marrying me instead of Emma.” And, with those fateful words, the phone call breaks up and a woman (Dawn Bradfield) shows up out of thin air and asks Maddie about the “wish she was making.” They go back and forth until Maddie sits on the stone chair and makes her wish and then—KABLAMMO!!—she wakes up to Paul Kennedy naked in her ensuite!

Can we pause here for just a moment? First of all, the woman who grants Maddie’s wish turns out to be Saint Brigid, patron of midwives, dairy farmers, babies, blacksmiths, and sometimes beer? None of which explains why in this movie she exclusively wears what appears to be a shalwar kameez, which is neither Catholic nor Irish. Is it just supposed to look exotic? Second, and unrelated, I feel what this movie is missing is ANY kind of sign that Emma and Paul are wrong for each other or that Maddie and Paul have ANYTHING in common other than that they both like his books and his face. There is just zero reason to even root for her going through the hassle of what’s about to come, which I guess is the point, and don’t get me wrong, I’m still game to watch. 

So back to Maddie, who wakes up very confused until she pieces it together that her wish has come true and she’s actually marrying Paul Kennedy, which makes her literally kick up her heels with glee. But is she so happy about it? With the help of the very meddlesome Saint Brigid, who keeps putting James and Maddie directly in each other’s paths and makes sure that Maddie’s supportive mother never makes it out of America, Maddie starts to see that what seems good in theory is not always good in practice. (I mean, did it seem good in theory?) She and Paul don’t share many of the same interests and, when he tries to put the moves on her, she reflexively beats the crap out of him. Solidarity, friend. Solidarity. That guy is kind of a twit.

Meanwhile, again thanks to Brigid, after Maddie literally falls into his lap, James gets hired as the wedding photographer and then the two of them end up scouting locations for some extra post-wedding PR photos Paul wants taken, which of course he does. How convenient! On the Cliff of Moher—where I hear it should actually be much windier and rainier than it appears in the movie—Maddie says how she feels like she “just stepped into a James Joyce novel” and James says “that’s not the reference” he was expecting. Uh, huh, wha, my friend? This man just finished asking her why she hasn’t written her own damn novel and now he can’t believe she mentioned James Joyce? She’s an editor, for the love of all things. She was probably an English Major. This isn’t exactly a stretch. It would be like if he, as a nature photographer, were in Australia and he said it brought to mind koalas and kangaroos. Is this really the bar we’re setting for the “good guy”? If so, it’s basically in the sub-basement. Also, later he makes some comment about how it’s fine for a woman to propose first, but he wouldn’t have let her wait that long (or something like that). I get that it’s supposed to be romantic because he’s saying he likes her that much, but it’s also weird because he’s kind of saying that a woman only needs that agency when a man isn’t up to the job, so it’s just reinforcing traditional gender roles after all.

Now, as you’ll expect, the two of them do eventually get caught in the rain and trapped together for the night, where Maddie learns to love beer and they have a “moment,” which is in quotes because a.) she actually explains how earlier they were in “romantic rain” together, thus killing the whole vibe and b.) they don’t actually have any chemistry, so it’s just us, the viewers, holding tight to the idea that they’re two people having a moment. We can do it if we try! Also, please note that this movie is incredibly chaste. It’s really neither here nor there, but I always find it interesting which way things swing in a rom-com. As things go on, Paul and Emma have their own moments, Saint Bridgid continues to mess with everything, including time (the things Catholic saints can do!), James keeps insisting Maddie see all the ways Paul is wrong, and Maddie keeps pressing James on why he evades talking about himself. Would it be better if someone other than her future love interest were schooling her on her current one? For sure! But the way they’ve structured it, there isn’t anyone else for Maddie to talk to about the situation—except for her far away mother. Her very best friends are hardly friends at all, but just characters against whom she bounces off in the pursuit of her other goals. It’s pitched as a Big Deal that James doesn’t really talk about himself and moves around all the time, but aside from wanting to photograph different animals and not wanting to settle down, there isn’t a compelling reason given for his waywardness.

Before all this is done, there will be a fight between two men, a realization that has been blatantly obvious the whole time, and a last-minute race to find romance. In the end, and this is a spoiler if you really haven’t been paying attention, Maddie begins her relationship with James by using all these tidbits of information she gleaned during her wished experience, none of which he remembers, of course, because it only happened in an alternate reality. But isn’t that entirely creepy to do in this reality?  Is she someday going to explain that she wished a wish to marry the author that he despises, but in the process of living out that life realized that she really liked him better, so came back to his reality to find him and woo him by using all of her knowledge about him? And how is he going to see that as anything except her Google stalking his soul? And is Maddie getting all enthusiastic about a Bolivian lizard she’s only just learned about because of James’s interest in it, for example, really that different from her pretending to like the things that Paul liked? Minor details for her to iron out later, I suppose.

Phew. I suppose I can see what my husband was saying about not being quite clear on whether I enjoyed this movie or not. I mostly solemnly swear on the dictionary that it was fun to watch in the way that this kind of rom-com is, and a delight to overthink afterwards. 

Overall Rating on the Chronically Streaming Pain Scale:

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