December 16, 2006
Movie Review: 'Love, not really'...(actually: 'The Holiday')
Yesterday I went to see the movie The Holiday. Now this was not a movie I was planning on seeing, but I had just gotten home from the grocery store and as I ran past some of the girls in the building I live in with eight filled plastic bags of groceries cutting off the circulation in my left hand they invited me to go see a movie with them. I hesitated and then said: “Yeah!” I hesitated only because I already knew The Holiday was going to be terrible by the way it's been promoted as the latest crappy romantic feel-good comedy. But when a group of ladies ask me to go to the movies, how can I say 'no'? Research opportunities like that don't come along everyday.While I don't necessarily object to movies that emphasize the importance of feel-good hugs, and male crying, there were parts of the story that made absolutely no sense to me ... (like how does a travel website make any money if people just switch homes and there is no money exchanged? Why didn't Cameron Diaz go to jail for driving without a British driver's license? Why would anyone just trust a complete stranger to live in their house?) For a good movie I can suspend my disbelief, but this was not the case. The characters in The Holiday were at least kind of likable; Cameron Diaz even started to grow on me by the end. I guess I just get annoyed by movies that are so predictable and are obviously trying to elicit emotions from me; mostly because for the most part they work and I end up resenting myself for buying into this sappy crap. I'm not ashamed to admit that I liked Love Actually, but that movie was actually good. The acting in Holiday was actually fair, but by no means capable of making up for the predictable sappy and often unbelievable story; but by the end of the movie the overall experience had improved to the point of feeling like a mildly anesthetized castration. I feel kind of like Scrooge bashing this movie so much but if you want to see a good romantic comedy, check out Science of Sleep, or rent Love Actually, but if you can help it, mind the gap and skip The Holiday all together: 2 out of 5.
