The Holiday (2006)

I have my girlfriend to blame for seeing this, though she knew how bad it was – she just wanted to watch something easy going and light, but even by those standards, ‘The Holiday’ is a poor, poor film.

The sloppy story is that of two women, frustrated with their lives (which revolve entirely around their love lives at that moment), who decide to swap homes for Christmas, one being in Surrey, the other in Los Angeles. Of course they both find love, as well as some form of companionship, with no strings attached. And there’s a happy ending.

Surprisingly, the film attracted the big names of Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jude Law and Jack Black, but even more surprising is the appearance of secondary characters played by the cool Shannyn Sossamon and the great Eli Wallach. Director Nancy Meyers’ recent successes with ‘What Women Want’ and ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ will no doubt have helped, but the fact that she wrote, produced and directed this film independently is suggestive that it could be a little self-indulgent and not superbly thought through.

My major gripe is the lazy way in which I feel the film was directed. Of course it’s ridiculously sentimental, superficial, artificial and optimistic, but that’s the romantic comedy genre. In the case of ‘The Holiday’, however, there is a poor rhythm to the film, with several scenes playing for far too long and eventually becoming repetitive. Most of the scenes in the film take place between two people, placing more focus on how their stories develop, but the truth is that once they’re established (ie. they’ve fallen for each other), the relationships don’t progress much further than overcoming a slight, but avoidable obstacle.

Also, the film leans too heavily towards the story between Diaz and Law, obviously favouring the supposedly more beautiful couple (they sleep together, whilst the cuter Winslet and Black becomes friends, before sharing a kiss). Unfortunately, Diaz and Law are also the worst actors of the four, and the scenes they share are frustrating. Diaz in particular is annoying, over emphasising all the time and muttering to herself what how she is feeling, rather than just allowing the audience to understand her emotions through her actions. Law, effective as the arrogant, handsome type in ‘Gattaca’ and ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ has now seemingly just become arrogant and handsome, and I haven’t seen him deliver a decent performance since ‘Ripley’.

Kate Winslet and Jack Black’s love affair is rather taken over by the simple experience of being in Hollywood, overplayed by the inclusion of Eli Wallach as a friendly neighbour, and apparently the greatest living screenwriter of yesteryear, whilst Black is a rather cheesy, clichéd film composer. This contrived, yet typical, version of Hollywood is offset by the English pub - another stereotype representative of Meyer’s lazy approach to the film.

I don’t really want to keep writing about this…it’s simply one of the worst of the bad films I’ve seen and I only finished watching it so I could declare so on this blog. I may be accused of being pretentious when approaching a piece of escapist melodrama, but to be honest it upsets me that people feel able, or a even willing, to emotionally engage with such superficial rubbish and then reject ‘serious’ art films that actually communicate something of value from which we can learn and understand something about ourselves.