When I went into The Holiday, I was not expecting a large amount of it to be a paean to the golden age of Hollywood. So, while I got largely what I was expecting … sweet romantic comedy which thinks it’s probably more meaningful than it really is … I got that little bit extra.
Amanda (Cameron Diaz) and Iris (Kate Winslet) decide that their lives suck, so they swap houses and continents. In Surrey, Amanda meets Graham (Jude Law), whose special ability is being just as verbose as she is. In L.A., Iris meets Arthur (Eli Wallach), who got into the movie business on the ground floor.
In these ways, their lives change profoundly.
The problem with this sort of movie is the balance given to each story, but I never really spent any of the film craving more time with Winslet or with Diaz. They were balanced fairly well, although they had very little to do with each other over the course of the film. Nancy Meyer did an excellent job of suggesting that they were both so far detached from their own lives that they could take up someone else’s with no troubles at all.
If anything, I demand more Jack Black! Demand him! Alas, Americans want to keep this great beast caged and unable to spread his wings. To them I say “fie”.
The Holiday is the sort of film for which word limits are imposed upon reviews: there’s nothing wrong with it, and it’s a thoroughly pleasant way to spend two hours. Culture shock plays a mercifully small part of the story and all of the main actors put in more than adequate jobs to create a film that it would be petty to complain about.
