Did anybody manage to catch this one over the weekend? The girl wanted to catch is so off we went. I'm not against a "chick-flick" every now and then (especially if it's good), so I went with open eyes.

I was actually plesantly surprised. Usually I find that Diaz annoyes me to no end (My Best Friend's Wedding), but I found her very likable in this. I actually felt like this was more her film than Winslett's, as that story line felt more of a B plot even though they were trying to do the parallel story elements line. Likewise, Law clearly had a larger role than Black.

All in all a good film worth seeing (although I'm not sure it was worth $7 each). The crowed seemed to laugh at all the same points, as they were genuinely funny, so that was good. My main complaint was the length. I felt as though they crammed a few too many plot points in at the end (especially since I did not feel like they were going to be resolved/addressed).

Worth a rental at a minimum.

seems like a movie where Jack Black wouldn't fit in

This movie was intriguing although I'm really put off by the length.

Yeah, it was a tad on the long side, but not a bad little holiday film...Not as good as say Love Actually, but a good way to spend 2 hours on a cold as hell Saturday afternoon.

I enjoyed it, though it did seem a bit long. I wouldn't say it's much more than a feel-good romance movie, but it does it pretty well.

I thought it was great. Diaz hasn't ever shined more. She is looking better and better. I sort of thought the Winslet/Black thing was a B plot as well...they definitely didn't get as much screen time. it was like to separate movies almost.

the stuff with Black and Winslet in the video store was great...

Nancy Meyers is fantastic.

I found a great review for this that made me laugh out loud - Enjoy!

There are bad movies, and then there are Nancy Meyers movies (first What Women Want, followed by the similarly excrescent Something's Gotta Give): chick flicks in the most damning, insulting sense of the patronizing term and reason enough to question the wisdom of ever spending money to see a movie. If you go to Meyers' latest, not only are you about to watch what is easily the worst movie of the year--you're most likely going to do it in the company of people who'll actually like it. The Holiday is appallingly written and icky besides in that familiar way of this brand of Love Actually/The Family Stone yuletide romantic refuse, casting Cameron Diaz and Jude Law as lovers fucking away the hours inside a Thomas Kincaid painting while Diaz's frumpy house-swap buddy, played by Kate Winslet, finds meaning in Santa Monica by propping up a fossil (Eli Wallach) and falling for a James Horner-esque composer of horrible soundtracks (Jack Black). Parliament on the Thames is featured as prominently as the Pacific Coast Highway to underscore either how vacuous the filmmakers are or how stupid they think the audience is while Hans Zimmer's soul-sucking, teddy bears-humping score saps away the last hints of credibility anyone has after participating in this gingerbread death march. If the opening voiceover narration by Winslet's lovelorn Iris isn't warning enough, consider that the narrative crutch used by Diaz's emetic movie trailer-editor Amanda is a series of fake movie trailers about Amanda's romantic imbroglios.

See, high-maintenance Barbie bitch Amanda meets her match in a man who seems a lothario but, wait for it, is in fact a loving family man with a pair of doe-eyed moppets Meyers uses in exactly the same way she does a little dog. (The real magic of Diaz's performance is that if you close your eyes, you can distinguish her from neither the whining of the dog nor the keening of the toddlers.) Seeking escape in the aftermath of a break-up with her good-for-nothing boy-chick (Edward Burns, of course), she heads to Google™ on her VAIO™ laptop and, like all retarded people do in retarded movies like this, proceeds to recite aloud everything she does and everything she reads. Meanwhile, her counterpart across the pond, Iris (Winslet), fed up with pining for her evil boss (Rufus Sewell--reaching his nadir at last as the British Edward Burns), agrees to exchange domiciles on the principle that exhausted, derivative crap such as The Holiday will appear less so with an infantile high concept. Jack Black (50% eyebrows, 50% gut) makes for the worst kind of love interest in that he's both physically unattractive and obnoxious, even turned down to a low simmer as he is here. That said, a scene in Blockbuster™ where he does his Tenacious D™ shtick to movie themes is, by that time, no more upsetting than a dinner party of the damned that accidentally recalls the card game from Sunset Blvd., an entire subplot that has dinosaur-Jew Tuesdays with Morrie pathos scrawled all over it, and a two-second cameo by the once-promising Jena Malone as some girl her Cold Mountain co-star Jude Law is about to screw.

Between the constant product placement, the incessant telephone/Blackberry communications, the recurring glimpses of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (bizarre in and of itself but especially in a film full of illiterates), and an extended bit where Black's movie score aficionado doesn't know that "Arthur's Theme" was already composed by Christopher Cross for what is quite possibly the prototype for this kind of bullshit, The Holiday manages to be somehow worse than an Ephron sisters movie in that a fake trailer seen herein for a fake movie starring Lindsay Lohan and James Franco is something I felt I'd rather be sitting through. It's made by people so dumb they really think that references to The Lady Eve and His Girl Friday will augment their project for its imaginary "discriminating" audience (let me break this to you gently: no one who respects film is voluntarily viewing The Holiday) while simultaneously mystifying the "broader" audience with a depth of movie knowledge. Even giving it the benefit of the doubt, The Holiday is the product of condescending census-takers who have dedicatedly watered down their script in order to avoid offending the people they hope will naturally be drawn to jellied tripe like this. It manufactures uplift it doesn't deserve for inhuman ciphers shoehorned into situations so unlikely that any sad souls who identify with the "ugly" one and empathize with the "pretty" one (and you should've flipped the casting of Winslet and Diaz there, Meyers) will have a brief, nasty reality check. In a year already sparse in terms of great films, credit The Holiday for at least upholding the annual tradition of a dark horse sucking at the vein of seasonal warmth.

well when you go into a film expecting to hate it, what do you expect?

as far as chick flicks go, this has to be a better one.

sounds like someone is lonely during the holidays.

Yeah, I stopped reading that "review" after the first few sentences. I saw the movie with my wife, thought it was good for what it was. If I hadn't none that Nancy Meyer had directed it, she would have been my first guess.

I thought it started out pretty shaky, but the different character arcs take hold and lead to some engaging viewing where you end up wondering how things will work out for them because you want things to work out for them because they are decent folk.

It's totally a chick flick, but for its 135 minute running time, it didn't feel that long, more like 120 minutes, so in that respect, I think the acting from the principals kept my interest and I wasn't bored with the storylines.

I give it 3 stars, or a grade of B.

That review is pretty funny.

I got dragged to this over the weekend, and it was almost exactly what I expected, which is a compliment. Nice and harmless with likeable leads and a mostly entertaining experience. I agree that it's a tad long, and I'd argue that it's the best performance of Diaz's career and the first time in what seems like forever that I didn't find her gratingly annoying. I don't know if she's becoming a better actress or if Meyers just knew what buttons to push, but hopefully it's a trend for the future.

One thing I liked was that you could buy these characters looking for love. I hate those stupid movies where rich, beautiful, perfect people can't find anyone to share their perfect lives with. It's just insulting. Here, it's believable that Amanda pushes men away or that Iris can't break free of her love for Jasper or that Graham has the issues he has.

This is a simple holiday chick flick, but taken in that context, it's not too bad.

das

saw it over the weekend with the gf, and i'll have to admit that i was pleasantly surprised. there were a lot of funny scenes or quotes, and it didn't drag too much until the end.

diaz wasn't too annoying except in her first scene. the four main characters were likable too.

Finally came up in my BB queue. I liked it well enough. I'm not a fan of either Cameron Diaz or Jack Black, but both were at their least annoying here.

It was indeed a little too long, the entire Eli Wallach subplot was totally out of place and could've easily been removed.

I wanted to hate this film too, but I liked it. Diaz and Black are pretty awful and annoying though. The focus of the movie should have been Winslet and Eli Wallach whom had the best chemistry with each other.

Funny that you both totally disagreed about what the focus should have been on.

I'm qurious - if you ditch the Ellie plot, then what do you have Winslet's character focus on? Just meeting Black and being friends? (Btw, I felt that entire relationship was a bit off).

The Eli Wallach plot made the film in my opinion. It was the most interesting thing going on in the film.

The Holiday was a terrible, terrible movie. Diaz was a bitch, Jude Law was likable but his offscreen infidelities were hard to ignore given how we're supposed to feel sympathy for his character, Kate Winslet did her best with what was a whiny pathetic role, and Jack Black was badly miscast. Eli Wallach felt like he was from another movie, but I'll at least give the dude props for still acting at age 115.

Plus let's not forget this film was well over 2 hours in length. If you're gonna make a chick flick, 90 minutes is the cutoff unless you can come up with some interesting, likable characters and this movie didn't have any.

Not only did this flick suck, it actually ended the relationship I was in at the time. After sitting through this dreck(which was the girlfriend's idea, not mine), she was silent the entire way home from the theater. And after I dropped her off, we never went out again. Avoid this crapfest at all costs!

This was one of those movies where my wife picked it up in the dvd library and she wanted me to watch it with her. Typical chick flick i thought. It actually turned out to be quite good. I think that being English i can appreciate any movie that shows my homeland and makes me want to be back there. But the movie is good. Its funny also because my wife used to hate Cameron Diaz, but after seeing her in this movie she now thinks she is the bees kness. It was good to see Jack Black play a character where he is not going over the top every second.

wait... you had no dialogue between you two after the movie? Pardon me for asking, but if you stated all the flaws about the film the same way here online on DVDTalk to her, I'd be embarassed too, or did it strike a personal chord with her and she realized something that she didn't want to share and just poof... she was out of your life - what a truly sad situation.

That's quite an endorsement

Girlfriend or date?!

I would normally agree with the 90 minute rule, but I actually never felt that this was dragging. In fact I felt the ending was rushed from what I recall.

I didn't say anything bad about the movie to her afterwards since she picked it. I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

But yeah, if I knew at the time that we were about to stop seeing each other, I probably would've unloaded on her for making me sit through the piece of sh-t.

Nice!

And it was not taken out of context.