Home for the Holiday

The Holiday

(PG-13)

originally published December 13, 2006

Kate Winslet and Jack Black

This year’s amorous Santa, writer-director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want and Something’s Gotta Give), comes down the cinematic chimney with just about the best present a gal could hope for on a cold winter’s night. Four bright young stars - Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Jack Black - discover that ideal movie love while clad in expensive duds and romping through gorgeously appointed homes. I have no difficulty seeing how people could find The Holiday insulting and obnoxious. Affluent, brokenhearted beauties bemoaning their unluckiness in love while waltzing through a three-dimensional magazine layout for Town & Country has been known to induce vomiting. A poor left-handed compliment, perfection is the major flaw in Meyers’ film. Newspaper reporters like Iris (Winslet) don’t live in quaint English cottages hand-decorated by Martha Stewart. I’m sure some of Meyers’ L.A. acquaintances reside as poshly as movie trailer producer Amanda (Diaz), but no one I know does. And this whole home exchange idea - you live in someone else’s abode and they in yours - is squirrelly, and has to be tremendously more thorny than the film implies.

But who am I kidding? No one wants to see a romantic comedy where unattractive people moon over one another in their rathole apartments on South Milledge. We want a modern fairy tale. The very appeal of Meyers’ film is the unattainable life it presents to us common folk. I am not Jude Law. You are not Cameron Diaz (or Ed Burns, if you’re a dude). To swoon over colossal unblemished complexions as they search for their unblemished soulmate is what we want. Bonus points if we get to laugh before - or until - the crying jag, and The Holiday is sincerely funny. Meyers began as comedy writer, experience she puts to grand use in the film. Not the most gifted dramatic actress, Diaz’s rangy physicality compensates for her over-emoting. Winslet, our “ugly duckling,” shines as always, and Law rediscovers his irascible charm as Iris’ not-quite-the-cad-he-appears-to-be brother, Graham.

The Holiday’s denouement holds no surprises, merely unentangleable complications, but underneath all the urbane trappings, beats a strong, if unrealistic, heart. I love a good old-fashioned Christmas romance. A handful of holidays ago, writer-director Richard Curtis gifted us with the fruitcakey Love Actually, arguably the greatest festive romance ever. Meyers’ Holiday lacks the gravity of Curtis’ frothily complex film, though both suffer from an overindulgent two hour-plus running time, far too long for the former’s light comedy. Meyers may need to trim the fat - too many failed romances and second chances - but her extra-long Holiday reminds us that Hollywood still has some magic left.