The Holiday...AKA...The Cheesefest

Rating: 4/10 (1 January 2007)

THE HOLIDAY 2006 (KATE WINSLET, CAMERON DIAZ, JUDE LAW, JACK BLACK) DIRECTED BY: NANCY MEYERS ~ THE RUNDOWN: Nancy Meyers asked Santa for something special, instead he left the moron a pre-packaged cheese fest chocked full of enough sentiment to fill a baseball field. ~ Okay, just as a warning to like the four people who are actually going to read this review, it's a bit complicated, because within it, I'm not only going to try and sort out the mess that is this sickeningly bad romantic comedy, but also define 'Chick Flick' along the way. ~ First off, I might as well state the obvious - this movie was unnecessarily long, including some random subplot about an old man that Meyers apparently threw in there just to be a bitch, or maybe to just give all the idiots in the theatre something extra to cry about towards the end. I really don't know. Secondly, this is listed on IMDb.com as a comedy, yet the most that came out of me was a muffled chuckle at the hands of Hoffman's cameo in Blockbuster. And this fact that I didn't laugh was not my fault; I know what's funny...this isn't. If you are a man who saw this and laughed more than twice you were A) High on a bad dose of Holiday Cheer B) Drunk off of Egg Nog and whiskey, or C) Held at gunpoint. Simple as that. Thirdly, DIE CAMERON DIAZ!!! My God, she's not even hot anymore! Her face has turned as disgusting as her acting, which, by looking at her resume, has gone nowhere...unlike the careers of Jude Law (filling in for Hugh Grant's day off) and Kate Winslet which immediately took dives on the day this came out. Jack Black, on the other hand, was good, and served as the only charming thing about this movie, making up for his mediocre looks and going with the whole "I'm full of energy" thing again. ~ Often, this movie somehow manages to waiver in and out of Chick Flick territory instead of just staying there the whole time. It is, afterall, well shot, and its messages about love are true and relate to just about everyone. Yet, by the end, it had taken too many trips to this Chick Flick Land and ended up getting trapped there. But, what exactly constitutes a 'chick flick'? Well, I've put much thought into the matter and I've concluded that it's simply a term used to describe movies that are stupid - movies plagued by implausible, clichéd scripts usually founded upon the stereotypical viewpoint of relationships. Chick Flicks seem to, most of the time, fall into the Romantic Comedy genre, but can go elsewhere and can really be about anything, as long as they're composed of stupidity and made for the purpose of cute but ridiculous entertainment. Now, I'm really not sexist at all, and I don't believe women are somehow naturally prone to like stupid movies, especially since both women and men seem to agree on the all-time greats like The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. So, although the name is a fallacy, it seems women have been conditioned to prefer these films...but that's for you to think about because this is a movie review and not a lecture. My point, I guess, is that The Holiday is indeed a chick flick, basically saying its a predictable, extremely clichéd, sickeningly sentimental excursion about love created to entertain people that simply haven't seen enough good movies. ~~ NEXT REVIEW: 'BLACK XMAS'