It's girl meets boy x2 in this season's Christmas romantic comedy.
I don’t know what it is about Nancy Meyers, the director behind Something’s Gotta Give and What Women Want , but I never seem to quite connect with her movies the way I want to. Don’t get me wrong – I certainly stand behind scripts with strong, well-written female leads that drive the movie. By all means, keep rolling them out. But for me, somehow, her movies seem to lack the emotional charge I routinely get out of far less impressive ventures.
In her new feature, The Holiday, Cameron Diaz (There’s Something About Mary, Charlie’s Angels) and Kate Winslet (Finding Neverland, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) play two women who decide on a whim to swap houses over the Christmas holidays and in so doing find the one thing they weren’t looking for—love. Diaz plays Amanda Vines, the successful owner of an advertising firm that produces movie trailers in Los Angeles. On the other side of the Atlantic, Iris Simpkins (Winslet) writes the wedding column for London’s Daily Telegraph. When Amanda finds out that her live-in boyfriend Ethan (Edward Burns) has been cheating on her, she decides she needs to get away from it all. And when Iris learns that Jasper (Rufus Sewell), the man after whom she’s been hopelessly pining, is marrying someone else, she thinks an escape is just what she needs to start over. The women bump into each other on a website for house swaps, and agree to trade houses for the next two weeks. Iris heads for some R&R at Amanda’s sunny Brentwood mansion, and Amanda retreats to Iris’s snowy Surrey cottage.
Once in England, Amanda promptly finds herself falling in love with Iris’s dishy brother, Graham, when he shows up in the form of Jude Law (who wouldn’t?). And in LA, Iris starts to find herself through her new friendships with an older neighbor and Miles (Jack Black) , the film composer friend of Amanda’s ex. Et voilà, a story is born.
My reaction to The Holiday was no different from my reaction to Meyers’ other pieces. It’s cute enough, the atmosphere is sufficiently romantic comedy-like, but somehow, for some reason, I just don’t bond with it.
Kate Winslet is terrific – I’ve never seen her not be – especially in this new genre for her. For the first few moments, she is just so elegant that is hard to buy her as the hapless sad-sack singleton that could be stuck in love with a cad. And her opening scene at the office Christmas party smacks a little of both Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually, but maybe I just think all British office Christmas party scenes where there’s a woman lusting after a hopelessly hunky coworker are similar. But, she quickly displays both such vulnerability and comfort in the part of Iris that it totally works; before you know it, you’re identifying with her and rooting for her and everything you’re supposed to do in this type of movie.
As the old guard screenwriter from Hollywood’s Golden Era, Eli Wallach (The Misfits; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) is just charming, and the relationship between his character and Winslet’s is sweet and heartwarming. Ed Burns is a little Woody Allen-ish in his turn as Diaz’s boyfriend, but he's still funny.
I thought Jack Black seemed an odd choice for the role of Kate Winslet’s love interest, but it turns out that Meyers actually wrote the part with him in mind after seeing him in The School of Rock. I was surprised to see he did a good job with his part, and kept his standard mugging to a refreshing minimum. Sadly, there is zero chemistry between him and Winslet. In theory you want the characters to get together, but in practice it just doesn’t work. They've got the friends vibe written all ove them, which makes it hard to imagine their relationship as anything but asexual.
On the other hand, Cameron Diaz and Jude Law do have chemistry, but that is the most I can say about their relationship. The problem isn’t Law’s. Aside from being a little oddly tan for a man living in the English countryside, Law brings a lot of surprises to his role. A guy that handsome just happening into your life is the perfect romantic comedy fantasy (indeed, waiting for something like that to really happen kept me single throughout most of college). And it’s great to see him so warm and likeable (oh, the endearing weeping).
But as for Diaz, anyone who has seen her in Being John Malkovitch, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, or even My Best Friend’s Wedding can tell she has acting chops. But they appear to have totally deserted her for the entirety of The Holiday. While she is unarguably the quintessential Southern Californian beauty, not only does she just seem way too happy to be the Type A, neurotic Amanda, but she also seems overly aware of the camera on her. As a result, her performance comes off as stagey, unnatural, and hard to watch.
All of that said, The Holiday was still an above average romantic comedy. The dialogue, even though it is too long in places (argument scenes especially need trimming), is mostly quite smart. And you do care what will happen to the characters, even if the tugs on the heartstrings aren’t quite as firm as I’d like.
ReelzChannel Rating: 
Check out ReelzChannel.com's The Holiday page for clips from the film and more!