Doesn't quite live up to the potential.

Rating: 6/10 (11 March 2007)

"The Holiday"  B- How can a film that highlights so many great films of the past then sell out all its potential? Because it's one of a plethora of this millennium's romantic comedies, where in Contemporary Movie Land there's always the non-surprising happy ending. In my opinion however, that's a crying (no pun intended) shame.
"The Holiday" tells two separate stories. Two single women, one in England (Kate Winslet) and the other in Los Angeles (Cameron Diaz) decide to swap homes for two weeks in order to heal themselves from their respective recent heartbreaks over the Christmas fortnight. On her first night in her new cottage, Diaz meets the drunken brother of her hostess (Jude Law). Big guess as to what follows. Although Diaz and Law are competent, this entire plot line was contrite, lacking originality and written flatly. Both actors have done better work elsewhere.
The interesting story here is Kate's. While driving around in LA, she meets her neighbor (Eli Wallach) pushing his walker, obviously lost. Being the ever-helpful Brit, Kate takes him home, only to discover that he's actually an Oscar-winning writer. The two develop a friendship, and Wallach entertains her with stories of early Hollywood. Winslet soon meets Jack Black, a movie scorer, and the two chastely hit it off. Winslet and Black team up to assist (and at times, push) Wallach into accepting a Writers' Guild honor.
This film is filled with artsy, educated people (Black and Diaz are in the film business; Winslet and Law are the bookish set). Sometimes the dialogue is spot-on and unpredictable. At times, I found the film quite charming and entertaining. Unfortunately by the last 10 minutes of the film, the big red Christmas bow becomes apparent.
The director and writer of the film is Nancy Meyers, who seems to have developed a chick-flick niche. In addition to this film, her credits also include "Something's Gotta Give", both "Father of the Bride" films and the completely forgotten "I Love Trouble". Perhaps my expectations were a bit too high, given the credits of the cast and of Meyers.
As they say in "Casablanca", "We'll always have Paris" (or England, in this case). But sometimes the woman alone on the plane is just better.