Fine movie. Had potential to be better

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2018)

My family watches this film around the holidays every few years or so. For a Holdiay movie it's pretty good given that most holiday movies are awful.
The beginning of the film is it's weakness. It gets to the fun part of the story way too late. A lot of the exposition material could have gone unexplained or been told in flashback after the two main characters had already exchanged their houses for the holidays. Which is really when the story becomes interesting.
Both of the leading laddies are likable and it's interesting to see how the strangers interact in their new lands and to see how all the likable characters end up together and friends in the end.
Women are likely to like this film more than men. But it's still a decent movie for guys if you can bear through a few cliche chick empowering moments and male character stereotypes. It's nice that both the women do have very different types of disfunctional love lives they're escaping. But like usual for chick flicks "evil" men are portrayed a bit too evil and the "good" men are a bit too good. The heartbroken women are a bit too perfect too to believe they would have such struggles getting a nice guy to like them.
Luckily the film has a few moments where they address these issues. And a few of the narrative elements very entertaining to make up for errors or nonsenxs. Particularly the friendships of Kate Winslet's character in LA and clips of Cameron Diaz mentally forming commercial to narrate her situations.