Leave the theater happier than when you entered

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2006)

I really liked The Holiday. Normally I wouldn't see it since it's rated only (right now) a 6.5/10 on IMDb, but a gal friend of mine highly recommended it. I took a chance on it, and was rewarded with a fun, satisfying evening for one. That is, I'm a single, 29 year old, straight male...who likes chick flicks--or pretty much any movie that's well made, genuine, and makes me feel better about life. Who needs dark and depressing movies to beat us over the head with what we already know: life sucks. Moving on. The Holiday struck me as really speaking to the nature of romance in the 21st century. But then, I'm a child of the era, so maybe it's just a limitation of my perspective, but I think that anymore our communication skills--as a society--have diminished to the point where romance gets more and more challenging. Rather than organically connecting with someone through light, harmless, small-talk, we interrogate them--if we're interested--and don't speak to most, at all, if we're not. We have email conversations, IM conversations, and telephone conversations, but fall on our face when confronted with actually genuinely connecting with others, face to face. This is unfortunate, and sometimes tremendously intimidating. Dates become job interviews, and people that may actually be a good match for each other dismiss each other because--in the course of the interview--they didn't see the spark of...whatever they're looking for.
I felt like The Holiday somehow managed to encapsulate the nature of modern dating, and the issues that make falling in love so challenging these days. I left the theater feeling like, just maybe, I wasn't completely romantically hopeless--even at 29 or beyond. Yes, the time it takes to find that love, and the loneliness and frustration that will be experienced in that time, may be arduous...but, ultimately, it is worth it. This movie connected with me, and left my life a little better, if only for a short time. And that, is priceless in its own way. See it!