The Holiday
starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Jack Black
written and directed by Nancy Meyers
Two women take a Christmas holiday by exchanging houses. Kate Winslet moves from rural England to Los Angeles while Cameron Diaz takes over her small cottage in County Surrey. The holiday is supposed to be an escape for each of the women from the woes of their lives. Then, in their new environments each woman finds new love and a new life. Each story could have been a film in its own right, and in this way I was reminded of another British film, Love, Actually (starring Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Alan Rickman), which featured four intermixed vignettes, each one of which could have been a full-length film in its own right. For that, Love, Actually got bad reviews, but I liked it anyway, as a heart-warming Christmas movie. I do not, however, like The Holiday. It moves too slow. It’s not interesting. Jack Black, Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet are all terrible. Jude Law is pretty good, though. He’s always good.