The Holiday DVD > Reviews > Holiday !

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Nice sweet film, romantic comedy
Disadvantages:	Not the best romantic comedy I have seen, some may find it too sickly sweet !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

***** The Film *****

Amanda Woods appears on the surface to be very successful, she is the owner of an advertising company in California which makes movie trailers and has a lovely luxury house but her personal life is falling apart. She discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her and she throws him out of the house and sets about trying to find somewhere to escape for Christmas, to leave the country and get away from men.

Meanwhile Iris Simpkins who works for the Daily Telegraph in London and writes the wedding column is having man trouble too. Her trouble is she is besotted with a man who does not love her. Things get a lot worse when at the work Christmas party she discovers he is getting married to another colleague. She too decides she needs to escape for a while and logs on to the internet to a house swap site and that is where she discovers Amanda.

They decide to take a break from their troubles and get away from the men in their lives so house swap for a couple of weeks over the Christmas period. Amanda swaps her luxurious modern house in California for Iris’s quaint little cottage in the English countryside.

Iris soon makes friends with Arthur a retired screen writer and sets about trying to help him. Her love interest comes in the form of Miles (Jack Black) a film composer who works with Amanda’s ex.

Amanda meanwhile meets Graham (Jude Law) who is Iris handsome brother and has an eye for the ladies. Will it be a holiday romance or will both these women find love when they least expect or want it?

***** My Thoughts *****

Having missed this at the cinema I was very keen to rent it to watch, certainly keener than my husband who did agree to watch it but with a little less enthusiasm than myself. Did it live up to my expectations, well yes I did enjoy it but I have to say it wasn’t the best film I have ever seen.

The basic plot idea is good. Two women swap houses for a holiday to escape the bad men in their life and in doing so find love. It is a somewhat predictable idea but there are one or two twists before you get there and that makes the film a little better as you don’t (or I certainly didn’t) see them coming.

The acting in this film wasn’t going to earn anyone any Oscar nominations its not exactly challenging but Kate Winslet does well as the slightly awkward, obsessively in love, somewhat downtrodden Iris. She will do anything for her annoyingly arrogant colleague who she is deeply in love with but can’t see that he is just using her.

Cameron Diaz’s character Amanda is quite difficult to like to begin with but she does eventually grow on you. Her willingness to let a stranger into her house even if he did claim he was Iris’s brother and then jump into bed with him I found a little pathetic. But their relationship does develop and there are a few twists with a few wrong conclusions being jumped to which are interesting to watch. I guess maybe the director wanted to show that their relationship work in the opposite way to perhaps Iris’s.

I thought it was an enjoyable, sweet film with a nice ending. It’s a film that you can curl up on the sofa with a glass of wine or a hot cup of tea (depending on your preference) and watch. It’s got romance, a little comedy and it’s nice (I seem to be using the word “nice” quite a lot but that’s because it was, a very sweet kind of film). Compared to other romantic comedies I don’t think it’s a good, there is not as much comedy as in some films but it’s an enjoyable watch, I am glad I saw it but I won’t be going out to buy a copy.

Mention also has to be made of the fact that disappointingly there are absolutely no special features on the DVD. At first I thought maybe it was because I had a rental copy, but I checked and the DVD you buy also has no special features. For a DVD in this day and age to have no special features is a bit poor in my opinion!

If you want an enjoyable sweet film to watch then you might just like this if not then give it a miss!

***** Further Information *****

Price – Currently on sale in Amazon for £13.98
Discs – 1
Classification – 12
DVD Release Date – 26 March 2007
Running Time – 130 minutes
Special Features – None whatsoever!!!