Career Women and Love Exlored Well

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2007)

With "The Holiday 2006" I got several movies in one. The studio bosses during the 40s would have had the power to bring in a re-writer, but present-day writer/director Nancy Meyers, who has literally grossed billions world-wide, seems to have total control over her script. This comment should not imply that I found fault with the story-telling.
I found this story of tremendously successful media professionals, who's live choices and actions had deprived them of true love, not only worthwhile to watch, but it gave me an additional inside of how women think and how they react. I's wonderful to have a woman's perspective of men to tell a story of their desires, love and commitment. This kind of movie is as needed as a woman presidents. You must have discerned by now that I believe that men and women are two different sub-species and that it has been for too long only men's privilege to describe and formate the world in which we all live together.
"The Holiday," although it's very name is geared towards revenues, and there are a number of name-sake moviessometimes two in one yearmade for the Christmas business, it is one of the better romantic comedy dramas and is a pleasure to watch on the big screen as well as on the little ones in airplanes and as "home entertainment." It has inter-personal and emotional dimensions that sets it far above the average fair, such as, let's say, "You, Me and Dupree."
Nancy Meyers certainly created characters that I "understand" where they are coming from, because I have experienced and acted quite similarly in my life, and although I believe I have no love issues right now, my tear ducts got a workout. Interestingly, Amanda (Cameron Diaz) had been unable to cry since she was a teenager when her parents broke up, and she could not commit to the man she unexpectedly or subconsciously attracted until she actually cried during her "holiday" while wanting to use a getaway from the emotional shards of a marriage with a philandering husband. The script tells us that she was married to her work and that sex with her husband was not important to heruntil now.
Another story within this continent-hopping impulse is that of a wedding reporter with her unlikely own office at London's "Daily Telegraph." Iris (Kate Winslet) who had falling in love with a fellow reporter three years ago and allowed that he did not reciprocate and use her for his ego, but not for true love.
Both ladies were shown as needy to get away from their heartbreaks and somehow got the idea to search the Internet for a house-swapping site at the same time and found the ideal partner. Iris changed her cute and quaint lonely Surrey (about 40 min. south-west of London) country cottage a la Beatrix Potter; with a Bentwood, California, mansion with maid, gardener, Olympic-size pool, and whose set alone is said to have cost a million dollars. The cultural clichés could have been endlessly explored, but Nancy Meyers centering in a few plausible ones to move her character development along.
Yet another movie within this holiday story is that of a screen writer Arthur of successful 40s movies played by the great character actor Eli Wallach, now 91 years. Obviously, Mrs. Meyers shares the love of inspiring and well-written movie scripts, and which Iris is turned on to by Arthur to be view on Amanda's wide and flat-screen home movie center. This alone is a worthy movie within the movie, the kind of material that actually would make a great feature film.
While Iris and Amanda are now in totally different environments and coping with cultural differences, new men appear, and their carefulness, fears, self-consciousness and damaged pasts are wonderfully described and interwoven with nearly flawless storytelling. Both, the charming Cameron Diaz and makeup-less Kate Winslet create their characters with great care and detail. Graham (Jude Law), Iris' brother who stumbles into Amanda's life, is simply WYSIWYG-natural and endearing. Personally, I have always had a non-response to actor Jack Black (who is staged here to become Iris' new love interest), because he seems to have not found himself to give his characters individuality. No matter what Mr. Black does, it looks the same to me. And it is not a question of range, it might just be his face and physique, or the amount of brainless roles that he has played. In other words, he was miscast as far as I am concerned.
Unlike some voices I have heard, I find both women's relative openness to holiday-quick, new affairs very plausible, even necessary, and the movie is deep enough to share some of the reasons for this. There is much character-revealing dialog offered, particularly Cameron and Jude are offered ample opportunities to make their audience understand where they are coming from, why they are acting the way they are, and where they can go... together.
If you want to lighten up your personal emotional baggage, set your life in perspective, here is movie that might just do that for you. Give it a try. I was enchanted by characters, acting and setting alike.