Some minor spoilers for Our Little Secret can be found within this article, if you haven’t had time to binge-watch it with your Netflix subscription yet!
To be honest with you, I didn’t have super high expectations for Lindsay Lohan’s streaming newcomer in December, Our Little Secret, which hit the Netflix schedule earlier this month. I’d seen her two previous Netflix ventures, Falling For Christmas and Irish Wish, the former which was too silly for me and the latter which I thought was a hard OK. But Netflix users love a good rom-com, and of course another one came down the pipeline. I stand here corrected, too, as I really enjoyed Our Little Secret, and thought one moment early in the film was hyper effective.
Here’s the gist, Our Little Secret revolves around Avery (Lindsay Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding), a former couple who end up staying at the (same) family home of their respective others’ over the holidays. When the movie’s main crux kicks off, Avery is dating Cameron (Jon Rudnitsky) and has not gelled well with his mom Erica (Kristin Chenoweth). Meanwhile, Logan is dating Cassie and gets along great with Erica. The two make a pact to help endear Avery to Erica without revealing their former relationship, but things start going haywire almost immediately.
The movie is cute as a whole (though Our Little Secret‘s critics might disagree with me) and to me was much better than the two other Lindsay Lohan Netflix projects marking the Lohannaissance. In fact, CinemaBlend’s own Danielle Bruncati seems to agree with me. But what I’d really like to talk about is how the movie’s most perfect moment comes right after the flick’s opening scene.
Lovebirds get a second chance in Our Little Secret as Lindsay Lohan and Ian Harding sit together on a couch.
Why The Opening Credits Are The Perfect Way To Kick Off Our Little Secret
Our Little Secret opens with the downfall of Logan and Avery’s relationship just as she’s prepping to leave her hometown to move to London, and effectively breaking the two up. (Prepare for some cringe.) This happens 10 years before the start of the events set during the present day in the streaming movie, and the way the film marks this is by using an opening credits montage looking back at the last decade. While most movies would probably show what Avery and Logan have been up to in the last 10 years, Out Little Secret actually marks the passage of time with a nostalgic look back at some of the major events of the last decade.
Not only are the opening credits very effective, it honestly made me more than a little emotional. For me, someone who is roughly the same age as Lindsay Lohan and grew up at the same time, the last 10 years have felt very short and very long at the same time. The transition from being in your twenties to your thirties is a swift one for any generation, but events like Covid, election cycles and more have slowed down time more than I expected, and made me feel like time has been a blur simultaneously.
I wasn’t expecting to get rocked to the core by the opening credits of a Lohanaissance movie, but seeing the past decade just play out in a rush before my eyes reminds me of what I’ve lost and gained as I’ve eked my way in my thirties. By the time the rom-com kicked off in the present day, I honestly felt so tied to Avery and Logan given their ages and our shared experiences.
It was really effective, so kudos to whomever came up with that montage to show how time had passed and how Avery and Logan had grown up and moved forward with their lives.
The rest of Our Little Secret is part shenanigans and part people figuring out they are maybe not with the right partners. If that’s your cup of tea, you’ll probably enjoy the new Christmas movie. But I just want to iterate one more time: Don’t zone out during the opening credits. You’ll get a brisk rush of nostalgia and probably be reminded of a few things that used to feel so relevant that have fallen to the wayside over the years.
