Lindsay Lohan is taking advantage of Mean Girls nostalgia. She recently released a cover of “Jingle Bell Rock” on Nov. 4 to promote her new holiday movie, Falling for Christmas. Listening to the festive rendition will undoubtedly bring back memories of Lohan’s iconic “Jingle Bell Rock” performance in Mean Girls alongside Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, and Amanda Seyfried. In early October, the Falling for Christmas trailer featured Lohan’s cover of the song, and now it’s available as a single.
The movie follows Lohan as a spoiled, newly engaged hotel heiress who suffers from total amnesia after an accident on a ski slope. She is placed in the care of a handsome, blue-collar lodge owner and his precocious daughter just before Christmas. During an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, Lohan stated that Falling for Christmas is a “refreshing, heartwarming romantic comedy,” adding, “Christmas is a time when family comes together. It’s just such a loving holiday.”
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In addition to the “Jingle Bell Rock” dance’s less-known details, a racier version of the original dance was intended for the 2004 Tina Fey-penned film, which was initially rated R. “They were going to turn and stick their posteriors up in the air,” director Mark Waters told Entertainment Weekly. “And then they showed it to me, and I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s too much! Go with something else.’” The now-infamous “thigh slap” was born during later choreography rehearsals for the dance. “That’s how we got this idea of, ‘Let’s do this stripper thigh slap simultaneously,’ and it just germinated out of the rehearsals organically, which ended up being the funniest part of the scene,” Waters said. “And Neil Flynn’s reaction shot!”
According to Waters, Flynn’s, who was portraying Cady’s father, shocked expression as he watches his daughter (Lindsay Lohan) slap her thighs onstage was all improv, just as was Amy Poehler’s overly involved mother dancing the choreography while videotaping Regina’s (Rachel McAdams) performance. “That was one of the amazing things about the movie, I got to work with all of these black belt ninja adult comedy stars like Neil Flynn and Tim Meadows and Amy Poehler, all of them,” he said. “The young actors were obviously the core of the story, but every time one of those guys would come in, they would just destroy.”
While describing the iconic teen film’s main characters, Waters emphasizes the word “young” since Lohan’s age created a challenge during the talent show choreography. “Because Lindsay was a minor at the time, we actually had a real struggle finding time to choreograph the thing,” Waters revealed. “We hired a choreographer; it was going to be a much more elaborate dance. And then, because we couldn’t book the time with her, it ended up being a little more roughshod and a little messier than we were intending, but that ended up being the greatest thing. We’re actually able to do this for real and have it feel messy like it should [for high school teens]. That worked for the movie.”
What complicated matters even further? “The movie didn’t choose Jingle Bell Rock as the dance’s first, second, or third song. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to license Christmas songs,” Waters says. “I don’t even know how many things we tried before we got the rights to ‘Jingle Bell Rock.’ We were just happy to have anybody say yes.” Falling for Christmas also stars Chord Overstreet, Jack Wagner, George Young, and Olivia Perez. The Netflix film premieres Nov. 10.
