A Comedy Free from Laughter --- or Giggles!

Rating: 3/10 (16 March 2007)

THE HOLIDAY clocks in at 138 minutes and is as free of laughter or even giggles as it is free of non-cardboard characters. The author obviously has no real-life experiences to draw from, nor real-life friends to model her characters after. This movie is strictly Bad Creative Writing #101, with characters and situations drawn from awful magazine stories or plucked from thin air. Since nothing touches our sense of reality, nothing is there to involve the viewer, to make us laugh, cry, or care.
I like all of the 4 major players in this picture, I liked the scenery, and I liked the positive values portrayed. I wonder why the script included exactly one "F" word -- to no particular purpose except to provoke the Strong Language rating.
This picture wasn't a comedy. Comedies are funny. But it made claim to comedy, and 138 minutes is way too long for any comedy. All great comedy classics are under 90 minutes. In this case the extra 48 minutes only intensifies the boredom.
DVD'S can be rented for $2.65 or less. That's 67 1/2 cents with four people watching. Plenty of copies are on the shelf. But you'll be wasting 2 hours and 16 minutes of your life.