The Holiday (2006)

 Originally Reviewed

Tuesday April 24, 2007

Out of all genres of film the romantic comedy is one of my favorites, though it’s quite rare to find a stellar example of one now a day. The genre has significantly declined in quality over the years and I have grown less of a fan due to the new format which now appears to be changing everything that once made the genre great.

The Holiday is one of those examples of a new fangled romantic comedy. The film revolves around two women: American motion picture trailer creator Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz), and British wedding column writer Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet). Both women have had absolutely no luck in finding decent men, and have spent a majority of their time either in bad relationships or pining for men who are only interested in using them. Soon both women experience emotionally draining experiences that lead them to look for a long deserved vacation...away from all men. Ironically the two meet one another online where Iris has listed her home on a home exchange website, and the two agree to switch homes for two weeks during the Christmas holidays.

Iris moves to Los Angeles and Amanda moves to a small English town, both hoping to spend a quite holiday alone, and most importantly get away from all men, unfortunately that doesn't happen. It doesn't take long for both women to meet someone, but hesitant in getting into another relationship they decide not make any commitments. Throughout the film the two women sporadically revert back to their sad emotional states. Will they ever learn to truly trust a man again or will they allow past horrible experiences to hinder them from true happiness in their lives?

The Holiday turned out to be a huge disappointment in terms of a good romantic comedy. The new genre format is the main downfall for this film. The first mistake was making an almost two and a half hour romantic comedy. No romantic comedy should be longer than 90 minutes and this film definitely does not have a strong enough storyline to warrant anything longer, which is why the characters seem to continually be walking around in circles in a plot that goes absolutely no where and ends but being very predictable.

Another new feature writers seem to love is attempting to link multiple stories into one. This was done in films such as Love Actually and I Heart Huckabees, I didn't like it in those films and I certainly don't like it here. What usually happens in these situations is you’re subjected to the least entertaining of the sub stories for the longest period of time. With The Holiday your torture is Cameron Diaz, who aside from having no talent whatsoever is in 80% of the film, plays a character who spends most of the time saying and doing the same things over and over again.

Strangely enough my favorite parts in the film encompassed Jack Black. I thought he was great in the movie and hilarious as always, though he had about 10 minutes of screen time...surprised? Word of advice, the writers should have ditched Cameron Diaz altogether and based the whole film on Kate Winslet and Jack Black, then there would have been a film worth watching. 

 

Overall I have to agree with the critical consensus on this one, The Holiday offers nothing new to the genre and is way too long. The storyline is so weak that being strung out over two plus hours  literally seems like an eternity. Had the film been cut down by about 45 minutes it still would have been too long. In the end, unless you enjoy this new screwy format of romantic comedy which takes forever to go around in circles ten times and then end up absolutely nowhere, or your a huge Cameron Diaz fan pass this one by. Jack Black is the best part of this film and he's not in it long enough to even make it worth while. When it's all said and done this is one of those holidays you wish never occurred.

5/10