A (Cute) Tale of Two Gals

The holiday entry The Holiday follows the trials and tribulations of…

Oh, who do I want to kid. The Holiday is director Nancy (Something’s Gotta Give) Meyers’ latest confection about pretty people with real problems.

Parts cute (really cute), parts happenstance, the movie wants us to buy into the possibility that Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet could be – gasp! – sooo unlucky in love, that they would swap houses for the holiday season in order to get away from their sorrows.

It just dawned on me that this movie is about…denial. And, wait for it…wait for it…it’s about what can happen when you are in denial – you just might meet Jude Law or Jack Black and live happily ever after. And isn’t that just so...cute?

Anyway, Winslet – in her first foray into a romantic comedy arena – plays Iris, an Englishwoman in love with a man who is about to marry another woman. For her part, Diaz – in a turn for which she hand-acts (that’s acting with her hands…a lot) – plays Amanda, a woman who has discovered the man she lives with has been unfaithful. And, jeez, isn’t this something: The two women, who have never met and live an ocean apart, find themselves in the exact same place.

They meet on a home exchange website and impulsively switch homes for two weeks (Iris moves into Amanda's L.A. house in sunny California, and Amanda arrives in the snow covered English countryside), where they both meet the men who just might restore their faith in romance and love. Again – cute, huh.

The Holiday is, indeed, a very cute movie. But it’s also uneven and almost derivative. Meyers needs to roughen up her work a little, if anything just to make it a little bit less storybook-like and a little bit more real. Good cameos, though (one of which took me by surprise – and had me hoping a darker-material-perhaps? reunion might be in the works).

My Rating ** 1/2

Photo: Columbia Pictures.