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| Holiday, The |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 138 |
| Public Rating: 8.99 (69 votes) |
Director: Nancy Meyers |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Romantic Comedy |
Year: 2006 |
| Writer(s): Nancy Meyers |
| Distributor: Sony Pictures |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Written and directed by Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give, What Women Want, The Parent Trap), The Holiday is a romantic comedy with not just one star-struck, mismatched couple, but two, and both are given relatively equal time on screen. Some moviegoers might see it as bargain, two love stories for the price of one, but that depends on whether one or both storylines are worth sitting through. And with well-known actors like Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, and Jack Black in the lead roles, at least there's hope that The Holiday will turn out to be a reasonably entertaining, non-offensive piece of Hollywood fluff, right? Alas, you'd be wrong.
The Holiday interweaves two romantic storylines connected by the thinnest of threads. After Amanda (Cameron Diaz), the owner of a Los Angeles trailer-production company, breaks up with her film composer boyfriend, Ethan (Edward Burns), for cheating on her, she's left with the realization that she's going to face the Christmas holidays alone. In her search for an alternative online, Amanda discovers a website dedicated to house swapping. Enter Iris (Kate Winslet), a columnist and editor for The Daily Telegraph in London, England. Still in love with her ex-boyfriend, Jasper (Rufus Sewell), a fellow columnist, Iris' day goes from bad to worse when she learns that Jasper has become engaged to his longtime girlfriend. Also faced with the prospect of spending the holidays alone, Iris goes alone looking for an alternative and finds Amanda (and vice versa). They decide to switch houses for ten days over the holidays.
In England, Amanda has difficulty adjusting to Iris' small, if comfortable cottage, and is on the verge of returning to L.A. when she meets Graham (Jude Law), Iris' brother, who shows up in the middle of the night drunk and looking for a place to crash. Amanda and Graham hit it off instantly and spend the night together. Complications ensue when Amanda and Graham begin to fall in love with one another, despite their protestations to the contrary. Amanda sees Graham as a womanizer, while Graham seems to drink too much (he's willing to overlook Amanda's insecurities, however). Meanwhile, Graham keeps getting phone calls from an “Olivia” and a “Sophie,” which he rushes off to receive.
In L.A., Iris gets comfortable in Amanda's McMansion, meets and befriends one of Amanda's neighbors, Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach), an elderly screenwriter who regales Iris with tales of Hollywood's Golden Age (even to the point of sending Iris off to rent and watch DVDs from that era, the better to prove his point). Miles, one of Ethan's friends and like Ethan, a film composer, comes around to pick up Ethan's computer and sticks around for Iris' company. Miles, however, isn't unattached. He's in a relatively new relationship with Maggie (Shannyn Sossamon), a shallow, but beautiful actress. But just as Iris begins to feel good about herself and her future, Jasper tracks her down, asking for help on his latest manuscript.
The Holiday goes wrong in so many ways, it's hard to know where to begin. While Cameron Diaz and Jude Law are easy on the eyes and share some chemistry, their storyline is nothing short of blandly predictable. Worse, given their backgrounds, backstories, and where they are in their respective lives, it's almost impossible to envision a “happily ever after” (a prerequisite for romantic comedies) for these two characters. Not to mention that writer/director Nancy Meyers doesn't so much resolve the nearly insurmountable problem of a long-distance relationship than postpone it.
As for the Kate Winslet and Jack Black storyline, the lack of chemistry between them is a minor problem in comparison to the minimal amount of time their characters spend together onscreen. With Kate's character, Iris, developing a platonic relationship wit the elderly Arthur, Jack Black's character, Miles, is often offscreen and when he is, Black's off-the-wall, manic energy pops in just in time to create a tonal shift from the scenes before and afterward. Plus, Iris and Miles' have their own romantic entanglements to resolve, meaning more screen time for Iris' ex-lover, Jasper, and Miles' callous, self-interested girlfriend, Maggie.
Sadly, if Meyers thinks that name checking film composers or stars from Hollywood's Golden Era will win her points with critics and moviegoers, she's mistaken. Critics and cinephiles will respond to the obvious film references with a “so what?”. Younger moviegoers and casual film fans won't “get” the references and won't care. Having Amanda and Miles working in the film industry as behind-the-scenes professionals is half as clever as Meyers imagines it to be. It's also hard to get around the feeling that Meyers is relying too much on what and who she knows (because she hasn't lived in the “real” world in decades).
Ironically, The Holiday is the kind of disposable, unchallenging mediocre entertainment that the Arthur character decries. Most of Arthur's ire, though, is ostensibly directed at action blockbusters and the bottom line mentality present in Hollywood, which presumably makes a mid-budget, visual effects-free romantic comedy like The Holiday an exception. It's not. At best, The Holiday is the kind of compromise date movie that'll probably due well commercially in the first few weeks after its release, only to sink into much-deserved anonymity shortly thereafter.
© Mel Valentin, 8th December, 2006
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