The Holiday review

Nancy Meyers looks set to repeat the box office success she had with What Women Want and Something's Gotta Give with her latest directorial effort, an across-the-pond romantic drama which should have all the right ingredients for a critical and commercial triumph. But the lack of a decent script and an even tone undermines her efforts and turns The Holiday into something of a wasted opportunity.

Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet play Amanda and Iris, a neurotic American trailermaker and a lovelorn English journalist respectively, and when they both find themselves unexpectedly single - and very upset about it - they swap houses for the Christmas season to get over their recent crises.

Amanda arrives at Winslet's improbably gorgeous Surrey cottage and immediately decides she has made the wrong decision, but when Jude Law turn up as Graham, Iris' brother, things take a turn for the better. Meanwhile Iris is flabbergasted at the size of Amanda's mini-mansion in Beverly Hills, but soon settles down in the company of neighbour Arthur (Eli Wallach), an octogenarian ex-screenwriter, and more importantly film composer Miles (a subdued Jack Black). The film flits between the two, although it makes little attempt ot examine the cross-cultural differences for either comedic or dramatic effect.

Amanda and Arthur's unlikely friendship - and it is just that - is the film's real highlight, as Arthur teaches Amanda how ordinary moments from life can be made into movie magic, and this is exactly what Meyers tries to do in her screenplay. But she causes several problems for herself in trying to replicate the classic Hollywood formula.

The script is often too flabby, leading to scenes that go on for far too long, and there are far too many Hollywood explanations for minor plot irritations: Diaz endlessly runs up the driveway to the cottage in the snow far too many times because her driver can't fit his car through, yet Graham and the driver himself both mysteriously solve this problem at the end of the film. The women's initial internet meeting is also contrived and it's not really feasible that they would wait until two thirds of their holiday has finished to speak to each other for the first time. Trivial perhaps, but there are several other obvious examples.

Plot issues apart, the film also lacks the humour that made Something's Gotta Give such a deserved success, and while Diaz and Law are fine to look at, they are no Keaton and Nicholson. The performances of Winslet and Wallach though are a treat and eventually partly save the day in a film that is otherwise far too cute for its own good.

Paul Hurley