'Our Little Secret' review: Lindsay Lohan deserves better than this holiday movie!

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Don't you hate it when this happens? You're spending Christmas with your boyfriend's family for the first time. You show up at the house for the big meeting with the parents and the sister, only to discover that the sister's boyfriend is the ex with whom you had a painful breakup 10 years earlier.

Ugh, it's really just the worst.

Poor Avery (Lindsay Lohan) experiences exactly this in the new movie "Our Little Secret," the latest endeavor in Lohan's work with Netflix (this has also yielded "Falling for Christmas" and "Irish Wish"). Avery's dating Cameron (Jon Rudnitsky), while her past love Logan (Ian Harding) has taken up with Cameron's sister Cassie (Katie Baker).

Avery and Logan make the unfortunate decision to not reveal this connection. Mom Erica (Kristin Chenoweth, doing her thing) and dad Leonard (Dan Bucatinsky) watch over it all.

Hilarity ensues and the Hollywood veteran Stephen Herek ("Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure") collects another directing paycheck.

MY SAY This is a bad movie in so many ways that it seems odd to begin with a tiny sprinkling of positivity.

Nonetheless, here it is: The career resurgence of the Merrick- and Cold Spring Harbor-raised Lohan remains a good thing. Her talent's intact. She does whatever she can with Avery. It's not her fault, at least when it comes to her acting. She needs better projects, as soon as possible.

As an executive producer on "Our Little Secret," though, Lohan might bear some responsibility. It is, after all, hard to imagine a more uninspired movie.

It plays exactly like you think it might, and it is exactly what it appears to be: yet another cheap attempt to cash in on some holiday cheer, a cog in an ever-expanding Christmas content machine.

It inspires no emotional investment, it has no interesting characters, offers zero chemistry between the stars and not the slightest bit of a reason to be anything but bored. In fact, "Our Little Secret" just sits there, the cinematic version of dead air, forcing its way through the motions before mercifully coming to an end.

It's not a Hallmark movie, but there's hardly a discernible difference. There's probably a better movie on the Hallmark Channel right now.

The premise has some potential: the tagline invites viewers to "have yourself a very awkward Ex-Mas." Get it? There's always fine comedy to be derived from awkwardness; one of the greatest ever TV shows, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," built its entire existence around exactly that. 

But the few times the movie tries to make something humorous out of the odd position that Avery and Logan find themselves in, it has a very strange idea of what's funny. Maybe the sight of Lohan accidentally getting high and quoting "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang while addressing a Mass strikes you as the height of comedy. If it does, please enjoy.

BOTTOM LINE Please give Lohan better movies.