Awful Rom, hardly any Com

Rating: 2/10 (30 April 2007)

"The Holiday" is 2 hours of predictable and fairly painful so-called romantic comedy. The romantic part of this equation is rom-com by numbers, it lacks any proper twists or turns that might make it interesting. There would never be any reason to worry about reading spoilers for this film, if you've seen the trailer and have ever seen another rom-com then you know exactly what's going to happen. Normally, rom-com's make up for their predictablity by being funny and entertaining - unfortunately this film relies on a few one liners and not many of them.
As far as casting goes, this film was made to sell as much as possible by having 4 big names without any consideration of whether they would be fit for the part or not. Without 'spoiling' it for anyone (probably too late for that by now), Jack Black is a complete sell-out, Jude Law is utterly unconvincing, Cameron Diaz has been mis-cast, Kate Winslet acted well but was painful.
I watched this with my girlfriend who normally loves this sort of stuff (In Her Shoes, etc...) and even she thought it was awful. Please don't rent it or borrow it from a friend, watch 'When Harry Met Sally' or even 'Jerry Maguire' but just don't bother with this.