Movie Review: The Holiday (2006)

A visiting in-law means I've been privy to watching movies I would normally not bother watching. One of these is The Holiday (2006), starring Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jack Black, and Jude Law.

First off, I want to distance myself from having a jaded viewpoint about this film simply because I'm not its intended audience. This movie, despite being a chick flick Romantic Comedy, sucked in an entirely new way. Not because I was not the intended audience, mind you, but because the forced plot devices and gymnastics involved rendered this film simply torturous. In fact, they should translate this into Arabic and force the people at Guantanamo to watch it repeatedly. Surely, that would force more than a few confessions.

The plot causes this movie to fall flat on its face. From the get-go, the viewer is expected to suspend their disbelief long enough to accept the unlikely scenario that there are two women on opposite sides of the planet who happen to be having relationship problems. They BOTH decide to go on vacation at a moment's notice. They BOTH happen across the same website offering home exchanges (and instant chat, mind you, which is not only implausible, but downright forcing a scene that would have been smoother had it taken place via long-distance phone call). They BOTH decide to exchange their homes on a moment's notice, (Kate doing so site unseen) deciding to switch pads THE NEXT DAY (without any exchange of contracts or paperwork, apparently). Okay, so if you manage to accept that implausible occurrence, then you're supposed to simply accept the fact that neither of these two bothers to alert their closest kin and significant others. This, of course, leads to Jude Law just showing up out of the blue to meet Cameron Diaz and Jack Black making an appearance to hook up with Kate Winslet.

Even if you're stupid enough to manage through that mangled plot, you're then expected to accept any number of impossibilities, such as these couples falling for each other in less than a week, the Screenwriter's Guild putting on a show for an old Hollywood writer in less than a week's time, and Cameron Diaz's spacey character actually being together enough to own her own business making movie trailers.

Speaking of Cameron Diaz, her acting is atrocious and over the top. It doesn't seem to be grounded in character at all. Jack Black plays himself, albeit with a more serious bent than usual. His performance is adequate, but nothing special. Jude Law is charming, but his chemistry with Diaz's character just seems forced and unnatural. Kate Winslet's performance seems to be the one valuable thing in the whole movie and that's a cloudy gem at best.

Chick flick doesn't even begin to describe this celluloid disaster. It's not even smart enough to be a good Romantic Comedy, frankly. In fact, it's somewhat insulting that Hollywood would level this to young working women, many of whom will probably enjoy it. I don't know. When I watch fantasy, I expect to see more than a few pointed ears and wizard's caps.

If you want a good romantic comedy, watch Bridget Jones' Diary, Sleepless in Seattle, Pretty Woman, Notting Hill, hell, even Serendipity has this wreck beat!

Sometimes it's called a Comfort Zone for a reason; I wish I'd never bothered leaving mine. Unless you want to waste 1:38 hours of your precious day (which inevitably felt like 3 hours, mind you), bypass this one and go watch the Spike channel on the upstairs television.

Sifted: 3/10