Embarrassment of the 'chick-flick' genre

Rating: 1/10 (11 January 2007)

Amanda in L.A (Cameron Diaz) is an emotionally retarded workaholic who has just kicked her boyfriend (Edward Burns) out for cheating on her with his secretary. Iris (Kate Winslet) in Surrey, England is a writer for a London newspaper and has just been delivered the biggest blow at an office Christmas party when it is announced that the ex-boyfriend (Rufus Sewell) who she is still madly in love with, has become engaged to the woman with whom he cheated on Iris with three years ago. Both women find themselves at an utter loss. Iris mopes about her little cottage, near suicidal, while Amanda desperately wants to prove something to herself and her ex  namely that she can relax, cry, and be happily alone. Amanda's solution? A holiday. She finds a website where people swap houses for 2 weeks and decides that Surrey is the perfect place for a vacation, choosing to swap her L.A mansion for Iris's quaint 'Rosehill Cottage'. In Surrey Amanda meets Iris's handsome, drunkard older brother, Graham (Jude Law) and Iris meets the best friend of Amanda's ex, music composer Miles (Jack Black) and you can most definitely guess the rest.
This is an atrocious film. And what makes this film all the worse is the irony of a character called Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) who is Amanda's next door neighbor in L.A and fast becomes companion to Iris. What's funny is that Abbott plays a man who was a screen-writer during Tinsletwon's hey-day. Abbott prescribes fantastic classics for Iris to watch and appreciate and in one scene lets out a great long spiel about how awful today's cinema is; specifically that box-office and blockbusters hinder creativity. Was writer/director Nancy Meyers shooting herself in the foot or what!?
It's not just that 'The Holiday' is predictable to the point of boredom. Chick-flicks are usually predictable, but that doesn't mean they can't still be good. Take 'Bridget Jones's Diary', for example. Everyone knew that book was based on Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' and therefore that Bridget wins Mr. Darcy in the end but it's still a bloody good chick-flick, even though the ending, and in fact the entire plot is some 194 years old. The film's plot leaves a lot to be desired. For one, it's not particularly encouraging to women, which is surprising since it was written by a woman (the same woman who wrote 'Something's Gotta Give', no less)  the whole story hinders on this idea that even though Amanda and Iris are both successful working women, they are lacking because they don't have a man in their lives. Amanda's boyfriend cheats on her and instead of rejecting his claims that it was her, who deliberately sabotaged the relationship (forcing him to cheat?) she privately agrees with his claims and unintentionally sets out to try and be the sort of woman he wished she was.
No, 'The Holiday's' failure does not solely lie in its plot, a lot of the film's faults have to do with the cast. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, both actresses who have proved in previous films that they do indeed have acting chops, both over-act. Diaz more than Winslet, but the over-acting is completely and utterly cringe-worthy. Honestly, watching Diaz jump around hysterically after punching her boyfriend in the face, I felt nauseous. And what really didn't help matters was the fact that these characters were specifically written by Nancy Meyers with Law, Diaz, Winslet and Black in mind. The result is a mixed caricature of each actor, compiled of previous film roles and media persona's. Cameron Diaz plays the breezy goof-ball slash every man's ideal woman; hints of her from 'There's something about Mary' and 'in her shoes' shine through. Iris seems more inspired by the real-life Winslet, as Iris is self-deprecating and entirely modest. Jude Law's Graham also seems to have been created with a great deal of influence from the actor's real life  as a womanizing drunkard in the beginning, but then becoming a sort of 'fantasy' of what his female fans wish the real Law was, a sexy wounded white knight with demons in his closet who just needs to be saved by a beautiful maiden. Jack Black of course plays the clown, though in this he seems to be going through the motions, and his 'comedy' is hollow for it.
This is a really, really awful film. I thought, in the last half hour or so, some tragedy would befall one of the pretty couples: perhaps one of the relationships would be abandoned, or the old man would die. Nope. I won't be spoiling anything for you when I say that there is a happy ending (well, theoretically speaking Lord knows I didn't come out of this film 'happy'). Perhaps the film could have been salvaged with entirely different casting, or if the story was a bit more balanced  though it is meant to be about both women, we mainly follow Diaz & Law, who had the most banal storyline of the two.
So, so bad  don't even bother hiring it on DVD when it comes out.