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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
I was very possibly the worst person to review this film. I tried to pawn this duty off on family and friends, as a sort of Christmas gift. No one I know saw a pass to the preview of this film as a gift, they saw through my schemes and thought of it as a burden I was passing along. That still doesn’t mean you won’t like this movie, I just can’t stand movies that can be described as “cute” or “feel-good.”
I know, I know. Jack Black is so funny (and even endearing when outside of his Tenacious D character) and Jude Law is so talented, and Kate Winslet is an Oscar winner that makes great film choices, and Cameron Diaz is so cute, so how could it be all bad? When you bring this powerhouse cast to a movie attempting smart and heartwarming, it is guaranteed to be good, right? Not right. You could bring the best actors in the business to a bad script and it is still just as bad.
Here are some trite “feel-good” movie setups:
The quirky old man that delivers bad lines, but because he’s so old, they seem funny.
The male romantic lead is an adorable father of two daughters…and a widower.
The female romantic lead is too nice to everyone, but it pays off in the end.
Cameron Diaz plays Amanda, a wealthy film editor from Los Angeles, who finds out that her boyfriend has been unfaithful. Across the globe, Kate Winslet, as Iris, is a too-nice British journalist that is in love with a man that is about to marry someone else.
These two characters meet online and decide to trade homes for the Christmas season, as they are equally frustrated with their own lives. So the very L.A. Amanda goes to the snowy English countryside, and the humble British Iris reports to Sunny Los Angeles for a couple of weeks over the Christmas holiday. What could possibly happen to these forlorn women? Well of course they fall in love with new men.
Amanda meets Iris’ brother Graham, played by Jude Law, and he is as much a gentlemen as the nobility of old England. He plays the stereotypical British fantasy man: noble, dignified, and charming. So the fact that he is a father of two daughters just gives him extra domestic qualities, and enables the film to use cute young British girls to deliver cute, kids-say-the-darndest-things lines that apparently make everyone else in a theater laugh. Confused and anxious to escape another relationship, Amanda tries to resist him, but he is Jude Law. Oh yeah, and he’s a widower, which means he’s lonely and not a villain that was left by his last love. He was with her until death did they part.
Meanwhile, Iris finds an endearing elderly man wandering through the LA neighborhood where she is staying. Her character flaw is that she is too nice, but that very flaw is the thing that compelled her to help the elderly man. As it happens all of the time in Hollywood, when you help an elderly man wandering around an affluent neighborhood, he is an academy award-winning writer. Because he is old, it is delightful when he acts flirty (apparently not “gross,” which is how I thought of it) and he is able, like the young British girls, to deliver lines that are neither funny nor well-crafted, and still get a laugh. Out of everyone else in the theater, not me. The only laugh I got throughout this picture was when I would look over at Brenton, who had come with me to endure this torture, and see that he was as confused and horrified by this film as I was.
So Iris meets film composer Miles, played by a very restrained and sterile Jack Black, and she too falls in love. The rest of the film is heartwarming and delightful. If you are the type of person that usually enjoys movies described as “cute” and “heartwarming” and “delightful” than perhaps this film is perfect for you.
I cringe at people that refer to films like this as “chick flicks” because I have more respect for the general intelligence of females than to assume any drivel of a plot wrapped loosely around a love story is appealing to most women. I would think that it is demeaning to present a wish-fulfillment plot that says the most important thing in a woman’s life is finding a man.
Nancy Meyers, the writer and director of The Holiday is working hard at defining her niche by manufacturing these demeaning “chick flicks” that utilize cheap plot ploys and adorable leading men to get women into the theaters, where her hope is, men will follow. Her prior films are What Women Want and Something’s Gotta Give. Both of these films made a subtle suggestion that there was a need for real female characters in popular cinema, but she blew that agenda off with The Holiday, which has no strong female characters.
Something’s Gotta Give was probably her most enjoyable film, as it had quirky Jack Nicholson and it revived the career of the talented and beautiful Diane Keaton. Every other film she has made has hinged on one or two silly plot ploys (in The Holiday Amanda is unable to cry) and loosely strung together scenes that make people traditionally considered “cute” (Keanu Reeves, Mel Gibson, and now Jude Law) into the dream mate, to insure that the “chicks” come to the theater.
If you are looking for an interesting and entertaining Christmas movie, you may be at a loss. Santa Clause 3 is certain to be an even worse movie, Deck the Halls looks like a silly take on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and The Nativity may be a little heavy-handed for a date night. If I were you, I would just rent A Christmas Story, turn the air-conditioner on, and cuddle under a blanket on the couch in front of a fire. It’ll be just like they have up North: winter with a good holiday movie to cuddle to, because the snow makes it too much of a pain to get to the theater anyway.
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