Review of The Holiday (2006) by Markbayer — 23 Jan 2007

This extremely likable, pleasant seasonal snowball will go down in 2006 film history as The Other Kate Winslet Movie. Her beautifully shaded, finely modulated portrayal of the intellectually and emotionally frustrated suburban housewife in Todd Field's Little Children is indeed a performance for the ages, but her more popularly accessible work here as a lonely woman who Finds True Love after trading homes (and continents) with another (Cameron Diaz) is absolutely nothing to sneeze at either.

In fact, Winslet has a monologue more than midway through the film in which she laments the plight of being in an unequal, unrequited relationship with someone who treats her with cavalier disrespect and absolutely no regard for her well-being that had the audience I saw this with sniffling and reaching for Kleenex.

(OK, full disclosure time: I was among them.) The fact that Jack Black (nailing an image-busting role that nevertheless takes advantage of his many one-of-a-kind qualities), as a friend of hers who has the potential to be something more, then rejoinders with the perfect, tension-releasing reply is an indication of just how much of a master of crowd-pleasing, satisfyingly manipulative entertainment Nancy Meyers can be.

Since professionally and personally splitting with her former partner Charles Shyer (The Affair of the Necklace, Alfie) Meyers has definitely proven herself to be the talented one in the former duo; she elicited a wonderfully graceful, career-redefining performance from Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give (as well as Keanu Reeves's most charming work ever in the same movie) and proved in What Women Want that the same Mel Gibson who spent the last several years torturing, crucifying and eviscerating the main characters in his own directorial efforts actually has a light comic side too! Meyers works similar wonders with Jude Law as well; maybe part of it is the desult of pairing him with the delightful Diaz, but this is the first movie I've liked him in since The Talented Mr.

Ripley in 1999. If Meyers has an essential flaw, it may be that she's a wee bit TOO eager to please: a movie that features a cute old man, two cute little girls AND a cute dog may be pushing a tad too hard.

Perhaps Meyers needs to bring a little less of the cute and a little more of the funny, especially since her contributions in the latter category, such as Black's Bobby McFerrin-like renditions of various popular movie themes, really score.

But it's impossible not to like a romantic comedy in which, for once, the mismatched couples we see at the beginning of the movie have overridingly good reasons for NOT belonging together, and one or the other halves isn't getting romantic walking papers for having allergies or liking Styx or some other stupid, contrived reason that serves no other purpose than to make the dumper look unnecessarily petty and superficial.

Sometimes you don't necessarily want your cinematic entertainment to reinvent the wheel; you just want NICE, and The Holiday fully delivers. And as recent Christmas-themed movies go (it seems like we get half a dozen new ones every season), ones like this and last year's Christmas in the Clouds and the three-year-old Love, Actually not only perform the essential service of counterbalancing such juvenile junk as Surviving Christmas and Deck the Halls, but provide the very warm feeling of being smooched under the mistletoe by your favorite person while standing in front of a warm fire a few moments before you open that one Christmas gift that's EXACTLY what you wanted.