Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

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The New York Sun

The new romantic comedy from the director of “Something’s Gotta Give” and “What Women Want,” Nancy Meyers, dings a chick-flick checklist of pandering, coo-soliciting attractions: you-go-girl triumph over cads, a misunderstood English hottie (doing double duty as a sensitive widower), a cute and wise old man, two sweet kids who seem tranquilized by their own adorability, and, of course, a montage set to Ella Fitzgerald.

A certain amount of formula has always powered even classic romantic comedies, from Ernst Lubitsch to Nora Ephron. At one point in Ms. Meyers’s film, a minor character, a retired screenwriter named Arthur, even references the hoary Hollywood device of “meet cute” and explains the convention of a leading lady having a girlfriend who exists to play second fiddle and not get the man.

The Meyers touch, though one shudders to coin the term, entails putting a tactically deprecating spin on her modern women. In “The Holiday,” Amanda (Cameron Diaz) is a driven L.A. film editor who can’t cry over her recent break-up. She can’t cry over anything, actually. Across the Atlantic, Iris (Kate Winslet) is a lovelorn English journalist who carries a torch for an editor colleague and writes wedding announcements for a living.

Desperate to flee their romantic quagmires, the two strangers end up swapping houses when Amanda finds Iris’s home-exchange ad on the Internet. Before long, Ms. Diaz and her long-limbed frame are crammed into Iris’s tiny snow-globe cottage while Ms. Winslet runs whooping through Amanda’s rambling, luxury-outfitted home under the California palms.

Amanda’s vacation warms up when Iris’s brother, Graham (Jude Law), comes to crash at the house after a night of drunken merry-making. They hook up, but she hesitates about how to proceed; a running gag has her imagining different preview trailers of her future (she cuts them for a living). But it emerges that Graham is a brave widower and father of two daughters with an imaginatively decorated bedroom, and he loves to cry. These qualities mark him as a catch, remember, because they mean he is sensitive.

But “The Holiday,” in its all-smiles way, seems to have it out for Iris. Alone in the social desert of car country, she comes upon an old man standing momentarily confused by the side of the road. Arthur (played by Eli Wallach of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” fame) and Iris fast become inseparable pals, and she hosts a Chanukah celebration for him and his friends.

The upshot is that right about when Amanda and Graham are deciding whether they love each other too much, Iris is helping a sassy oldster exercise in a pool.

Even Arthur can’t figure out why iris is alone. Nor can I. It’s typical of a lopsided movie that wastes Ms. Winslet’s talents and radiance as a pathetic second fiddle with unenviable prospects. The actress is such glowing company that she elicits greater warmth of compassion than the movie warrants. But she’s stuck with an unctuous old flame played by an unappealing Rufus Sewell and a potential suitor played by a neutered Jack Black.

Those curious about how Mr. Black’s rambunctious underdog comedy might work in this context have remarkably little to appreciate. As Miles, a composer of film scores, he’s supposed to be Iris’s quirkily gallant love interest. But Mr. Black decides that tempering his anarchic energies requires adopting a cloying slow-witted sincerity instead. He has moments, but they come off forced, as if meeting some contract quota for zaniness.

Mr. Black also appears for just a fraction of the time one might expect from a romantic comedy that runs 138 minutes — a length that tests one’s patience for scenes of endearing courtship and rehabilitated self-esteem. It reflects the seasoned confidence of a filmmaker who sold $180 million in tickets to “What Women Want,” a strained Mel Gibson vehicle that perversely remade “Look Who’s Talking” with women instead of babies.

But “The Holiday” is more like Ms. Meyers’s last film, “Something’s Gotta Give.” Diane Keaton’s intuitive talents could be hard to appreciate in a premise that broadcast what it really thought of her middle-aged character. In “The Holiday,” Ms. Winslet is stuck fretting away in a dead-end role, while the romance played out by Ms. Diaz and Mr. Law heads to its sanctioned conclusion.

Looking like a couple of lanky, toothy J. Crew models, Amanda and Graham graciously put aside their differences (his greatest sin being his double life as a fantastic single dad). Iris and Miles do dutifully get together as their oddball foil couple, even though the only thing odd about either is that they’re in this movie.

And the season’s flagship romantic comedy steams off, oblivious to the clutched and shaking heads in its wake.


The New York Sun

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