{"id":169,"date":"2007-04-17T10:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-17T10:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2007\/04\/the-holiday.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T20:00:39","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T20:00:39","slug":"the-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2007\/04\/the-holiday.html","title":{"rendered":"The Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/amodini\/491392474\/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" align=\"left\" alt=\"holiday\" height=\"454\" hspace=\"15\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/195\/491392474_e1a151794c_o.jpg\" vspace=\"5\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a>This film could be classified as a chick-flick because it&#8217;s based upon the romantic lives of two contemporary women, one American (Amanda &#8211; a wholly American looking Cameron Diaz) and one British (Iris &#8211; a dark-haired and considerably slimmed down Kate Winslet). Amanda is the very rich Hollywood based movie-trailer producer with her very own swank Hollywood mansion, while Iris is a comparitively mormal newspaper writer. Amanda needs to get away post a breakup with her unfaithful boyfriend &#8211; who&#8217;m she promptly kicks out of her mansion. Iris needs a break from her toxic relationship with a co-worker who is marrying someone else but needs Iris on-the-side. Thus Iris gets treated like yesterday&#8217;s left-overs by the cad but yet has not the strength to break away from him.<\/p>\n<p>Nirvana seems to be in sight when Amanda spies Iris&#8217;s beautiful country cottage on a home-exchange program on the Internet, and the women agree to swap homes for the next 2 weeks. So, Iris comes to LA and Amanda&#8217;s reaches snowy Surrey, and we are left to find out whether either of the women find what they are looking for. Not that that&#8217;s ever in doubt &#8211; chick-flick remember ?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d expected a romantic tale and I got two. Only they were a bit too sappy and had too many &#8220;theatrical&#8221; dialogues to sound real. There are sweet spots I admit, but for the most part, I could predict where the sugar sweetness would begin to spill out in the form of a background song. Yes we know there will be happy endings, but would it hurt to surprise us once in a while ? The film moved pretty snappily in the beginning but really dragged around the middle. Could have been a lot shorter than it&#8217;s tedious 135 minutes. <\/p>\n<p>Diaz and Jude Law make a good pair. Cameron and Kate both act beautifully, with Winslet really playing her way into our sympathetic hearts. And while I do think Winslet a bit horsy-faced for a mainstream Hollywood heroine, what gets me truly indignant is Jack Black paired opposite her. I mean Jack Black ? Of all the handsome men in Hollywood, Nancy Meyers puts in Jack Black as one of the romantic leads in a chick-flick ? Do you want to attract the female demographic or do you want to drive them away ? I am dumb-founded.<\/p>\n<p>The story-line treads a safe and predictable path, and while Amanda&#8217;s love-tale seems to fit right in, Iris&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Holiday-Kate-Winslet\/dp\/B000MQC9H4?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=amosmovrev-20&amp;link_code=bil&amp;camp=213689&amp;creative=392969\" imageanchor=\"1\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" alt=\"The Holiday\" hspace=\"10\" src=\"http:\/\/ws.amazon.com\/widgets\/q?MarketPlace=US&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;ID=AsinImage&amp;WS=1&amp;Format=_SL160_&amp;ASIN=B000MQC9H4&amp;tag=amosmovrev-20\" vspace=\"10\" \/><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=amosmovrev-20&amp;l=bil&amp;camp=213689&amp;creative=392969&amp;o=1&amp;a=B000MQC9H4\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" \/> arrangement with Miles seems more contrived &#8211; I wouldn&#8217;t have thought it strong enough to make it into this kind of a &#8220;romantic&#8221; film. The movie itself is fairly average with not-so-sharp editing and a penchant for making movie moments which don&#8217;t happen. Still it&#8217;s considerably shored up by Kate&#8217;s charm and Cameron&#8217;s infectious energy, and if you watch it it&#8217;ll have to be for these two.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/11570614-8214346739771689545?l=reviewroom.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This film could be classified as a chick-flick because it&#8217;s based upon the romantic lives of two contemporary women, one American (Amanda &#8211; a wholly American looking Cameron Diaz) and one British (Iris &#8211; a dark-haired and considerably slimmed down Kate Winslet). Amanda is the very rich Hollywood based movie-trailer producer with her very own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hollywood","category-movies"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"This film could be classified as a chick-flick because it&#8217;s based upon the romantic lives of two contemporary women, one American (Amanda &#8211; a wholly American looking Cameron Diaz) and one British (Iris &#8211; a dark-haired and considerably slimmed down Kate Winslet). Amanda is the very rich Hollywood based movie-trailer producer with her very own&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}