The Holiday
Review by Fritz Esker
Writer-director Nancy Meyers’ (What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give) latest effort, The Holiday, is a movie that girlfriends and mothers across the country should love. And it’s pleasantly enjoyable enough to keep boyfriends and husbands from complaining too much when compelled to see it.
Cameron Diaz plays a Los Angeles-based woman who cuts movie trailers for a living. Her live-in boyfriend (Edward Burns) breaks up with her after confessing to cheating on her. Kate Winslet plays a journalist in a small town outside of London. The object of her unrequited love (Rufus Sewell) has just gotten engaged. Depressed and disillusioned with men, the two women connect online and agree to exchange houses for the Christmas holidays. Naturally, love soon enters the women’s lives. For Diaz, it comes in the form of Winslet’s brother (Jude Law). For Winslet, it comes in the form of a film score composer (Jack Black).
In romantic comedies, charming leads are half the battle. In that regard, The Holiday is in capable hands. In particular, Winslet has long been a favorite of mine, and she makes for a charming, authentic heroine. Diaz and Law use their natural charisma to good effect and Jack Black makes a smooth entry into the romantic comedy genre. Like Meyers’ other solo directing efforts (she made Father of the Bride with her ex-husband Charles Shyer), The Holiday is plagued by a too-long running time (around 2 hrs and 10 minutes).
Since the film is based in L.A. and features three primary characters (Diaz, Black, and Eli Wallach, playing an elderly screenwriter Winslet befriends) in the movie industry, the film tries to play with movie conventions. A running gag involves Diaz imagining trailers depicting the events in her life (complete with voice-over narration provided by one of the guys who frequently does voice-over for trailers). Wallach’s character consistently refers to rom-com stand-bys like the “meet-cute” and the “best friend” character. Watching these scenes gives one an inkling of an even more inspired film that might have occurred, a film that does for romantic comedies what Shane Black’s underrated and underseen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang did for detective/buddy movies. However, Meyers is not that ambitious. She aims to please her target demographic and she succeeds in a way that should be painless enough for guy’s guys as well.
On a side note, seeing Wallach (Clint Eastwood’s nemesis in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) and seeing a trailer for Rocky Balboa (in which a 60-something Sylvester Stallone seriously challenges for the heavyweight title) gave me an idea. Give the Rocky Balboa treatment to The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. Make a new version featuring Eastwood and Wallach chasing each other around the desert in their old age. It won’t happen, probably because the two men appear to have a modicum of dignity, but…hey, the thought made me laugh.