A hit-and-miss romantic comedy!

Rating: 8/10 (29 February 2008)

The Holiday is the story of two women: Amanda (Cameron Diaz), who lives in L.A.; and Iris (Kate Winslet), who lives in Surrey, England. The two are both having guy troubles and decide that for their Christmas holidays they'll take a vacation far away. The two get on a web site that allows you to exchange homes with another for however long you like, Amanda and Iris meet on the web site's chat room and decide to switch lives with one another. Once in their new locations the two women find love and finally learn how to start living life.
I must say that the film overall is really quite good, but only small portions are great and some are just flat-out boring. I think this problem arose in the fact that the story essentially follows two completely different story lines, and one story line is really fun and entertaining, and the other is a lot weaker and is very unforgettable. Throughout majority of the film I found myself enjoying Kate Winslet's side of the film more than Cameron Diaz's side, and it all really came down to their separate story lines. Kate Winslet's story of befriending an old screenwriter from the Golden Age of Hollywood and finding a love interest in Jack Black was more entertaining. Now don't get me wrong, the other story line has some good things about it, in particular Jude Law being Cameron Diaz's love interest, and Jude Law's children in the film are fairly cute and funny, but this story line ended up being very cheesy to me and a little too melodramatic as well. Overall the story was very hit-and-miss for me, but overall the film is very enjoyable.
The film is well written and well directed by Nancy Meyers, and the acting is really good, in particular Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black, and Eli Wallach (who plays the old screenwriter). All of the other production values are good as well, it was definitely a well made film, if only it could have fixed its few problems within the story and maybe found a way to of beefed up the weaker side of the story the film would have been even more enjoyable, but because of that it is really only a decent film that is fun to watch every now and then.
A good 8 out of 10!