The Holiday

Kate Winslet portrays Iris, a shy writer who has been carrying on a one-sided romance with a colleague. Heartbroken when he gets engaged, she decides she needs a change of scenery and trades homes for the holiday with Hollywood power player Amanda (Cameron Diaz), who also is nursing a broken heart. While Amanda finds romance with Iris' brother Graham (Jude Law) in the English countryside, Iris falls for music composer Miles (Jack Black) in LA, while befriending Arthur (Eli Wallach), a lonely neighbor with ties to the golden age of Hollywood. But can either romance outlast the holiday?

Winslet as always is enchanting, and overshadows Diaz, proving what a superior actress she is. Her performance is flawless and real, while Diaz overacts and over gestures her way through the entire script. Black makes an unlikely but believable romantic counterpart. Overall, it's an enjoyable romantic comedy with a pretty good ensemble cast.

I had wanted to see this movie when it came out. I liked all the actors in it and the plot sounded like fun--not. The Kate Winslet/Jack Black and Eli Wallach sub-plot, saved the movie, that's who the 2 stars are for.

Cameron Diaz, who I normally like was terrible as was Jude Law. This is not romance. Dragging a drunken stranger to use for sex, that is not romantic and yet people think this is good. The whole relationship with these 2 ruined the movie. Sorry I don't root for loose women and her over-acting was terrible to boot. I felt no chemistry between them whatsoever.

The Kate Winslet story was sweet. She was a much better person, as was Jack Black. I heard people knocking Jack down for his straight bit, they should have been knocking Jude and Cameron for their performance and this miserable script for them.

Eli Wallach was superb. He added much to the movie. It was so sweet.

I'm with the reviewer who called it "Tainted Love". If they had built up a relationship with those two, maybe it could have amounted to something, but loose sex with a strange drunk is NOT charming and either was Cameron's arm's flapping.

And this was a Holiday movie? Isn't that special?

Always a good chick flick. I admit that I've seen this movie a number of times now. I bought this as a gift for a chick. She loved it. The end.

This movie portrays nicely the coincidental interactions and developing relationships between unlikely individuals. I generally hate on Cameron Diaz, but she's pretty charming in this movie. And Jack Black never ceases to amuse.

The Holiday is an enjoyable film that proceeds along two parallel storylines. First we have Kate Winslet and her holiday experience travelling from London to spend the holidays in Los Angeles. Second we have the parallel story of Cameron Diaz, and her holiday in England after leaving Los Angeles.

Kate Winslet's story, in particular, was well acted and very entertaining. Cameron Diaz's story was also entertaining, with the introduction of Jude Law's character. However, I had one major problem with the Cameron Diaz storyline.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

During the course of the film, we learn that Jude Law has two young daughters, and that he is a widower. He is struggling to raise his young children, do well in his career, and maintain some semblance of a social life. However, other than the one time when Jude Law informs Cameron Diaz that he is a widower, there is absolutely no mention of the late wife. Even the children make no reference to her. It is as if there are no lasting scars at all of the late mother. I would have expected that the passing of a mother would have a tremendous emotional impact upon a young family, however we see no onscreen reflection of this. Some onscreen development of this storyline would have helped. Perhaps a conversation between Jude Law and Cameron Diaz where they discuss his late wife, or perhaps one of the children mentioning that she misses her mother. Yet the film contains nothing like that.

We are then left with an odd situation: a young handsome father, with two charming daughters, just waiting for a woman to walk into their lives. Any lasting impression of the late wife/mother has been completed wiped out. It is as if the writers were searching for a way to create a situation to make Jude Law's character very sympathetic, through a tragedy, and then showing most of the good side of the equation, with little of the pain that must have come with the passing of the wife. I found this very odd, and it detracted from the film.

Otherwise, the film was well written and enjoyable. The storyline about Kate Winslet befriending the famous screenwriter is particularly good. Overall a very enjoyable movie.

I found the whole scenario of this movie, contrived and fake.
(1) How many young women even live in gigantic Malibu mansions with a swimming pool, gym, and huge kitchen?
(2) If they do, would they then be naive enough to let a foreign total stranger live in their mansion, drive their car un-insured in the dangerous madhouse of L.A.'s traffic (and in the opposite road lane that British are accustomed to), and to use all their valuable stuff on just a day's notice?
(3) Who would impulsively pay the exorbitant air fares that airlines charge for last-minute flight bookers, as both women did, to visit a place they have no connection with and have no friends at?
(4) How could a single woman like Kate Winslet, logistically, possibly work in downtown London and then commute so far out every day to a big rural drafty, thatched-roof Farm house? (No Londoner, especially a single woman, ever lives like that). The village's charm was over-stereotyped.
(5) What woman, smart and successful enough to afford a mansion like Cameron Diaz, would naively open the door to a drunken stranger late at night in the middle of nowhere (in a snowstorm), and then 8 minutes later have sex with him, when she was planning to fly home the next day? This casual, mindless treatment of sex is disgusting, especially for a Christmas film. Do all these women viewers really find this romantic? Then there's something really wrong with them. I had no sympathy for Cameron after this scene.
(6) Finally, the spoken line about Cary Grant being from Surrey is incorrect - he was instead a native of Bristol).