The Holiday

Review by Loc

Intersecting character studies that revolve around love and human frailty, how many of these flicks come out every year? How many ways can you retell the story about someone getting over a bad breakup, finding that the dreaded option of being single leads to the most opportune chance encounter, and love prevails over all? The Holiday attempts to throw its hat into the mix, digging into the romantic-comedy well and filling that beautiful holiday-season void as The holiday-season schlopfest. How does it do? Quick hit: it was so bad I almost walked out of the movie, many, many times.

Why is it so bad? Let us count the ways. First, the writing is horrible. From the writer/director who brought you Father of the Bride, The Parent Trap, and Something’s Gotta Give, you would think that The Holiday wouldn’t be missing in the writing department. But it does! Imagine trying to write a smart, sharp romantic comedy involving strong, bright female leads. Now, imagine filming the very first draft that you produce, no edits, no rewrites, just the first stuff you spewed onto the page. And that’s what you get with The Holiday: over-long dialogue, unbelievable dialogue, boring dialogue, droning dialogue, ugh, horrible exchanges. Why don’t I care about any of the characters? Because everything they say is about five times as long as it should be, and five times as boring as a movie character should be.

To compound the matter, the acting is not top-notch, no no no. Worst offender: Cameron Diaz. Maybe you all know this, but she’s a horrible dramatic actor. Dance around like a corny cheeseball in Charlie’s Angels, sure. Act like a complicated career woman who has to find a way to let go of her inhibitions, horrid! To the point of pissing me off. I was not only annoyed at her performance, she was the biggest culprit in making me want to walk out of the movie. What’s the best type of acting? When the audience forgets you’re trying to act. What’s the exact opposite? Cameron Diaz! And, it must be a contractual obligation for her to sing and dance over a popular song in every movie for her now. This time, we’re treated to an awful rendition of The Killers.

The other actors, not bad, but zero chemistry. Kate Winslet, she’s a great actor. Her interactions with Jack Black? Negative on the chemistry scale, so how the end up together, I have no idea. It was horrible, horrible drek. Jude Law? Too many close-ups of his non-sympathetic mug makes it difficult to empathize with him. Add that he has as much chemistry with Cameron as an inert gas and nothing works at all. Yes, that was a chemistry joke, and yes, that was funnier than anything in the movie. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

And the plot, well it really isn’t crucial in this movie. It’s the setup, it just gets you in the door. Two recently scorned women end up doing a little house-exchange vacation/holiday, and they end up in totally new places where they find totally new loves. End of plot, beginning of amazing character portrayals and interactions. Too bad the latter failed to occur.

Overall, The Holiday is a long, drawn-out, boring exercise in clichéd love stories. And clichéd love stories aren’t always a bad thing, we love seeing the same formula come out time and again. But then its executed this poorly, nothing about the characters or their stories is interesting or fun to watch. Instead, you end up wanting to just push Cameron Diaz into the snow and bury her so you don’t have to see her horrible acting chops anymore. Out of the 14 days of house exchanging, The Holiday doesn’t even manage to vacation for more than 1.4 days. That’s right, it earned a 1! That might be worse than a 0, because a 0 might mean a difference in tastes. A 1 means there’s nothing redeemable about how bad it is, but its not because I don’t enjoy the genre, it’s because the movie is horrid.