A shortage of magic in the movie theater has seemingly been sweeping Hollywood ever since the release of ""Love Actually"" in 2004. Instead of Christmas stories filled with wine, romance and candles, most movies that have been released during the holiday season in the past five years have been loaded with idiot slapstick comedy that involves has-been actors chasing each other around white suburban America in bathrobes. Movies like ""Love Actually"" and the original ""Santa Clause"" are rare gems in the bleak mid-winter of Oscar season, and they just don't come around often enough.
""The Holiday,"" despite all of the unavoidable bias that it accumulates just for starring Cameron Diaz and classifying itself as a romcom, is one of these movies. From the constant flow of Hans Zimmer's brilliant score to Jack Black's cool mastery of comic timing, ""The Holiday"" is truly magical. Not perfect by any means but consistently human and avoiding all clichAcs, this movie will get a bad rap from many film critics who take their job too seriously but still succeed with almost any audience.
The film gets off to a bumpy start, but Kate Winslet is always charming and always believable, and she shines as Iris, the slightly naA_ve British journalist from Surrey, England. Cameron Diaz plays Amanda, Winslet's counterpart in Los Angeles: rich, glamorous and a total diva in the world of movie-trailer production. After men troubles irk both of their lives in strange and unrelated ways, Iris and Amanda decide to switch homes for two weeks over Christmas. Culture shocked and completely alone in England, Amanda meets Graham, Iris' sweet and well-meaning brother. In his best performance since ""Closer,"" Jude Law outlives the role of the sniveling weasel-face and creates a very real human character here.
In the vein of all romantic comedies, romance between Amanda and Graham ensues, but each time a different romcom might take the common route, ""The Holiday"" introduces entirely fresh elements, keeping its audience both interested and intrigued. Secrets are revealed and accented by authentic human reaction. There is a very tangible moment in the film where anyone can sit back in their chair and say, ""Wow, this movie just got very human, and I wasn't expecting that.""
In the more interesting storyline, Iris meets an 80-year-old screenwriter named Arthur and proceeds to learn a great deal about both herself and the magic of classic Hollywood cinema. She also meets Miles, one of Jack Black's more palatable characters since ""High Fidelity,"" with whom she develops a fast friendship involving a lot of old movies, unusual conversation and wine-drinking.
The relationship is slow to develop, keeping its audience guessing, laying each new detail beside the last with such satisfying restraint. The pay-off to both plots is just what it should be. It makes one feel Christmassy, like inviting over a few close friends and drinking red wine in front of the fireplace.
""The Holiday"" is in the vein of ""Love Actually,"" not as good, but magical, almost sparkling. It is radiant and charming, a chick flick by stigma, but moving and pushing like one of those great holiday feel-gooders that modern Hollywood needs. It can get ripped for its daft and complex romance, reamed simply for failing to deliver some non-existent caliber of screenwriting, but this is a movie meant to make somebody smile—and it works.
