Fun the first time around, but...

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2006)

I enjoyed this film hugely when it first came out on the big screen. Alas, I have finally revisited it on DVD, and oh dear - what a disappointment! It's not that Cameron Diaz's character has to cope with fairly obvious cultural differences once she's in England - nerve-shreddingly narrow roads, low cottage beams etc: I have to say that these totally chime with my experience with all my American friends who have come over here. But the slipshod plotting (how come the car can't drive up to the the cute little cottage at the beginning, and yet can at the film's end?), the all-too-worthy agony aunt-style philosophising, and too many clangers (Cary Grant's from Surrey, eh?) which evidently only got through due to the whole thing being all too firmly under the control of Nancy Meyers (no room for actors to improve some of their appalling lines, or for someone to point out glaring inconsistencies in the story line): all of these things are too glaringly obvious for comfort.
So I'm less than sure, now, that the film is really much of an improvement on such popular yet brainless romantic comedies like 'Notting Hill' (or indeed most of those embarrassments by Richard Curtis): at least Curtis's productions are quite openly about wish fulfilment, ungrateful though his roles for the American actresses are. And I can no longer see why I thought the characterisation in "Holiday" was particularly "sharp" - it now seems pretty much a mixture of generic and wishful thinking (the Jude Law character, for instance).
Overall, too, this is a seriously poor showing of some fine actors: Jude Law's endless mugging is ghastly to see after such films as 'The Talented Mr Ripley' where he gives a sensational performance. The lack of sufficient chemistry between him and Cameron Diaz (or was it just their trying to get through that awful script?) finally destroys even the latter's performance. And Kate Winslet, at her best in off-beat and feisty roles, is here given the ungrateful task of being a rather worthy, conventional English lass - quite a weepy one at that. So in all, OK if you have just short of 2 hours 20 minutes to waste - but definitely not something to add to your collection.