The Holiday

The Holiday

One of the better romantic comedies of late. Not exactly life-changing, but pleasant to watch.

Recommendations: The Matrix , Fratello sole, sorella luna , The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John

There IS no spoon!

Last updated: 2010-03-13 08:38:50 by McDozer

The Holiday

The Gist

After both Cameron Diaz (in the US) and Kate Winslet (in the UK) fail in their relationships, they hook up to the internet and switched homes (a home exchange program) to get away from men. When they are at each other’s places, they meet up with Superman and Batman respectively. Excuse my French. What I meant was they meet up with two perfect men (no wonder I got mixed up – all fictional characters). Will they fall in love?

What Do I Think?

Without a doubt, this film was tailor-made to cater for the female demographics. Nancy Meyers crafted a very well decent story, a story perhaps one of the best romantic comedies I have ever watched. Though a bit lengthy, every scene served its purpose and many were pivotal build-ups to a few key endings of the film. This film is also a major weep-maker; at least for me.

Unlike many other rom-coms, this film doesn’t mainly contain sad stories about broken relationships. It’s mainly about love and how it happens. It’s very relaxing since there are no major villains, except for maybe carb and some unintentional third-party love-wreckers.

So why do I call it a weep-maker? While watching this film, I simply could not hold them since there were so many scenes of ‘nice revelations’ that conveyed messages of joy. The scene where Diaz was finally able to do something she couldn’t. When Winslet’s friend saw not 11 but hundreds of people waiting for him. When Diaz realizes what kind of person Jude Law really is. When Diaz and Law was in the tent. Aw man… I hate you Nancy Meyers!

It was an amazing job she did to build the plots with great foundations to create that tear-flowing climax for me. Lucky for me, the toilets were near.


This movie is quite intensively dialogue-driven and that’s where the strength lies. I like how the characters converse because they do not contain much manufactured intelligence but mainly played around with great sense of realism and honesty. Just makes me want to converse like that in real life.

The actors did very well for all their respective parts. Directly after watching The Pick Of Destiny, I opened my eyes more whenever Jack Black appeared. He is just so calm, charming and decent in the film. Of course I was all the while waiting for him to explode into his usual JBness but I knew it wouldn’t happen. He did sneak in some of his nicer trademarks in however but you have to observe real closely to find them happening.

This was ultimately a great date movie and if you were with your date, you cannot help but to kiss/hug him/her during the movie.

Rating: 8/10

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Last updated: 2009-08-11 21:37:44 by joekhor