My wife Laura is a wonderful girl (she hasn't and won't, in her own Beauvoirian terms, become a woman). She is funny, intelligent, profound and erudite but (aside from her two favourite films 'Billy Liar' and 'Carry On Camping') she generally has horrible taste in films with a particular leaning towards Rom-Coms. And that results in me having some degree of expertise in the field. Which is a shame for 'The Holiday' because it means that I've seen it various times under various names before. The only surprise is a delightful turn by Eli Wallach as nonagenarian screenwriter Arthur Abbott. Whether it is delightful in its own right or I'm being kind because it is wonderful to see one last hurrah from a screen great I don't know or care, I loved it.
The storyline- such as it is- involves four heartbroken people finding love at Christmas. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet on the rebound from bad relationships house-swap for two weeks and find love with regular visitors of one-another's. Cameron meets Jude Law in snowbound (but, oddly, never snowing) England and Kate finds love with Jack Black in sun-kissed Los Angeles (where she wears winter clothes throughout).
Oh, why am I bothering- it's crap. It requires a lobotomy, not a suspension of disbelief. The key players have no discernible chemistry and their characters are as two-dimensional as they are vapid. Jude Law gets the plum role as the seeming playboy who is actually the widowed father of two young girls- yes, that is as interesting as it gets. In the best supporting role Rufus Sewell gets to re-enact Hugh Grant's character from 'Bridget Jones' Diary' (told you that I was an expert) and once again raise the question of how a man can be that good-looking despite have such wonky eyes.
Anyway, I'm going to give this 2/10 (both points for the presence of Eli Wallach) and the memory that I could see a film with more wit, charisma, cuteness, more realism and yet more fantasy by watching the decidedly average 'Love Actually'.
