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Shelf Beauties |
The Holiday After such a
horrible
run of dreadful, I-want-to-poke-my-eyes-out-to- Kate Winslet
stars as Iris – a writer at At the same
time, Amanda (Cameron Diaz) is breaking up with her cheating boyfriend
in Will each find
new love, new hope and new lives in their new, temporary towns? What happens when it is
time to go home? Writer/director
Nancy Meyers delivers a movie that is cute enough, especially for the
heavy
holiday movie season, but could have used a bit more focus on the
interesting
portions of the film. She
seems overly
obsessed with Amanda’s whirlwind romance in It takes much
too long for Iris and Miles (Black’s character) to light the
fire of love and let
its flames devour them. Meyers
sticks
Winslet with a sweet, but pointless, story about how she gets to know
Amanda’s
amazing, elderly next door neighbor, but, other than making Iris look
like the
second coming of Mother Theresa (and adding about 30 minutes to a movie
that
should be shorter than it is), it’s out of place and
doesn’t add anything to
the proceedings. Of
course, that’s a
shame because Black and Winslet have a sweet, quirky chemistry that is
fun to
watch because they are real and much more endearing to the audience. Also, Meyers, in
an attempt to be all cute and Hollywood insider-like, comes up with a
gag that has
Amanda seeing and hearing her life as if it was a movie trailer
(complete with
the movie trailer guy doing the narration).
It never seems to be very insightful or funny,
especially after Meyers
comes up with a much more hilarious fictional trailer that Amanda is
working on
for a However, when
all is said and done, The Holiday is sweet in the
right places, funny when it
needs to be, and comes off better than it might be because it takes
advantage
of our spirit at this time of year.
We
want the cute, sappy ending, and you get the feeling The Holiday is more than
willing to deliver. Black gets off
to a rough, stiff start to his role, but finds his footing and turns
Miles into
the sweetest and funniest part of the movie, giving us the right
amounts of
goofy and sad. Winslet
is a treat and a
wonder to watch as she, much like Black, is the stumbling, bumbling
everywoman. She
fills Iris with a good
heart, so the audience wants to root for her and take her into our arms
when
the chips are down (and, for the record, I am willing to take her into
my arms
when the chips are up, down or sideways).
Meanwhile, Diaz
and Law make the best of their characters, who aren’t nearly
as dazzling. Diaz,
stuck throughout most of the early
movie doing a bad Lucille Ball slapstick impression that feels forced
and
overdone, overcomes that adversity to find some part of Amanda that is
likable,
even though Meyers makes Amanda into the most annoying of the four
characters. Law
does this too as his character
becomes more human and less movie-time-party-boy as The Holiday unfolds. The Holiday is a decent enough date movie, or a nice chance
to get away from the hustle and bustle of the season when you just want
an easy
laugh. 2 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4) The Holiday is rated PG-13 for sexual content and some strong language.
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