The Holiday (2006)

PG-13 for one f-bomb and then some pretty standard PG-13 language after that.  I really wrote that first because I didn't want to forget the f-bomb, but the PG-13 is really for sexuality all throughout the film.  We don't see much, outside of Cameron Diaz in a bra.  But it is made plain that many of the characters are either sleeping with each other or sleeping around.  Also, there's some concerning alcoholic tendencies that really need to be addressed.

DIRECTOR: Nancy Meyers

It would be a minor miracle if I can knock this out before I go to bed.  I am writing against the clock and against anything that would be even lightly considered wise.  I just knocked out Yojimbo about an hour ago. I was about to play catch up with my movie blogs...and then I finished Tokyo Godfathers.  See, I'm going whole hog with this Christmas break thing.  I used these past few days to embrace some Christmas stuff that I've avoided for the longest time.  And now, I've watched The Holiday, a movie that many have watched every year and talked about to death.  It's not that I'm into rom-coms.  It's that I love being culturally literate.

And I went into this one with a good attitude.  Do you know who surprised me about The Holiday, though?  My wife!  Mrs. I-Love-Rom-Coms was cool about The Holiday.  I still haven't gotten a straight answer out of her on whether or not she's seen this movie before.  What I do know now is that she does not care for Cameron Diaz.  Now, this is not the first time that I've heard my wife say that she didn't watch a movie because someone in the movie irks her.   This has been a thing.  But she's also been known to 180 on many actors after seeing them in something good.  I remember the days when my wife would refuse to watch a Scarlet Johansson movie, but now thinks she's pretty darned good. But I hate to be this guy, but my wife might have a point about Cameron Diaz.

Now, I'm going to contextualize this because I've given an odd amount of thought to the career of Ms. Diaz since watching this movie.  If there is a really weak spot in The Holiday, it comes from Diaz.  I'm sorry, Ms. Diaz.  I hope my following explanation at least gives me some slack on the rope I'm hanging myself with.  Cameron Diaz is the product of a very specific time in Hollywood.  This movie came out in 2006.  That gives  me a lot of information.  People who have read everything I've ever written probably know my thoughts on the movies between 1999-2003.  That's peak insane film era.  The time before this is definitely not off the hook, especially when it comes to making Cameron Diaz a star.  But Cameron Diaz's career flourished when actresses were asked to make very specific choices when it came to movie making.  What choices were these?  The answer was "Big choices."  Everything was huge during this time, especially for A-list American celebs.  To give a bit of context, we're also looking at Will Smith a bit here.  Smith learned to pivot his career from this larger-than-life acting style when movies call for it.  But Diaz made her bread and butter from this style of acting.  I mean, we're looking at stuff like There's Something about Mary and Charlie's Angels.  She crushed in those movies, but these are also movies that absolutely lack subtlety.  They're fine because they are nailing what audiences are looking for.  These are movies that smack you in the face and want you laughing on the floor.  They don't want the chuckle.  They want the guffaw.  

The problem with Diaz in The Holiday is that she's across from a bunch of actors who are incredibly subtle, despite being in a fairly broad rom-com.  If you really want to chalk it up to British versus American, there's an argument to be had there.   But we even have Jack Black, who is probably a bit pre-Jack Black Jack Black here (Jack Black!).  We're looking at High Fidelity Jack Black here.  Maybe more Orange County Jack Black here.   This, by the way, is my favorite Jack Black.  But I think he also is still somewhat defining himself.  He's breaking through the cultural zeitgeist in this era.  Black would eventually embrace the lovable goofball that we've seen him in stuff.  But with The Holiday, he's trying out leading man.  He's charismatic as heck.  As much as he's holding back from going full Tenacious D here, there are moments when we get that counter cultural megastar with this movie.  It's kind of what makes him charming.  He's taking a script where he's asked to play the nice guy and just peppering it with elements of what makes his so charismatic.  It's great.  But it's also slightly damning because I don't think that Diaz is doing that.

Now, I'm playing headcanon again.  All of this is entirely inappropriate, by the way.  I'm speaking flippantly about someone's career where she worked long and hard for, and I'm just dismissing things out of hand.  I apologize to everyone, but I also want to understand what happened here.  Part of me thinks that Nancy Meyers loved having Cameron Diaz in her film and was just willing to let her do her thing.  After all, Diaz is probably at the height of her career in 2006.  Who is going to try to put the breaks on someone that large and in charge?  The second option is that Diaz is doing her own thing and assuming that, as Cameron Diaz at the height of her career, she knows how to make a rom-com.  After all, didn't Nancy Meyers see There's Something about Mary?  I hope it's not that.  I've been rooting for Diaz with all of the hulaballoo when it comes to revitalizing her career and coming out of retirement stuff.  But she does not fit in this movie.

I spent too much time talking about Cameron Diaz.  I'm going to accept that Diaz is a bit distracting for me and accept that her character Amanda just acts differently than everyone else in this movie.  One of the things that we have to take for granted is the notion that people have to fall head-over-heels fairly quickly.  The story --which I have to give Meyers credit for --has the burden of a deadline.  These are two women who do house exchanges halfway across the world from one another.  I just learned about house exchanges from this movie and was told by my wife that they are a thing that really happens.  I don't understand how people do this, but more power to them.  But the fact that both couples are doomed to be burdened by geography after a certain date is an interesting story that is oddly underserved at times, especially in the Iris / Miles storyline.  As such, Meyers really sells the Amanda and Graham relationship.  While I don't quite know what Graham sees in Amanda, especially given his specific familial situation, Jude Law sells it enough that we can invest in it pretty quickly.  We get what Amanda sees in Jude Law.  Again, from a writing perspective, I don't necessarily hate it.  I don't believe it, but I don't hate it.  It is great that we get the notion that Amanda doesn't really realize that the reason that she is unhappy is because she's kind of vapid.  It never makes her the villain.  The villains are pretty easily laid out here and we can understand how unsympathetic they are.  But I love that we don't have to have that spoon fed for us.  Instead, we're left with a sense of exploring juxtaposition.

When Amanda discovers that Graham has two girls and that he is a widower, we can understand her anger for being lied to.  It's a lie of omission, but it seems pretty flagrant.  But there's a moment where I yelled at the screen and Meyers got me good with that one.  There's a moment where Graham's daughter asks Amanda for a sleepover in her room.  Now, Amanda declines in an incredibly polite and mature way.  I read this as setting boundaries and not wanting the girls overly invested in a woman who is going to be leaving for America in no time flat. But I like better that Amanda is mentally unprepared to be a mother.  After all, Graham as an archetype represents irresponsibility through his drunken debauchery.  When he reveals that, not only is his life far more together than Amanda thought, but that he might be more together than she is, that's a fascinating dynamic.  (Also, I have to say that Jude Law never looked better.  I'm incredibly comfortable saying this.) 

The funny thing is, the Iris story, while way better in terms of delivery, is incredibly confusing to me.  It seems like a lot of the Iris story (We all like Iris way better, right?  She's meant to be the real heroine of the piece.  I'm not wrong on this.) is devoted to Eli Wallach's Arthur story.  And the weird WEIRD thing is that it almost reads as a rom-com between 90-year-old Arthur and maybe 30-year-old Iris.  Miles, even though he's the romantic lead of the Iris storyline, takes a back seat up until the end when he goes full bore at the story as the handsome male lead.  There are so many of those Arthur scenes where I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, that old perv is in love with Iris."  And Iris is almost leading him on.  I know. The story is supposed to be showing how caring Iris is of all the people around her, which leads to gross people like Jasper taking advantage of her. But there are some scenes where I thought, "And this is where Iris and Jasper kiss."  Don't get me wrong, I aggressively ship Iris and Miles.  I get how they like each other.  But so much cinematic real estate is devoted to Arthur that I'm surprised that Meyers managed to stick the landing with Miles.

The one thing that bothers me about the Miles storyline is that Miles represents the "Nice Guy" archetype.  He's the perfect man. He's passionate about what he does and it makes him attractive.  He seems to genuinely care for Iris when she is a doormat for Jasper.  (Again, we're playing the juxtaposition game.)  He's funny, at least in the world of The Holiday.  But it does really read like he's cheating on Maggie.  It's not a sexual affair, but he seems to be actively flirting with Iris from the moment he meets her.  He keeps finding excuses to go over there.  Now, this opens the door to the question, "Can men and women be friends?"  I don't hate the notion that they are friends and, I'm sure that Meyers would confirm, Miles probably thinks the same thing.  But within hours of Maggie being out of the picture, he's going full bore at Iris.  The fact that he asks her out within the week of getting dumped by someone he claimed to be obsessed with (He sent her a Christmas present to Lake Tahoe!  I think it was Lake Tahoe...), that reads as not so much "Nice Guy" archetype as much as sleezebag archetype.  Still, I tend to be critical of rom-coms when there's any kind of adultery on the part of the leads.

I wish I liked this movie more.  Out of the modern rom-coms I've seen, I didn't loathe it.  It does some really good things.  But it also feels incredibly dumb at times.  That seems to be par for the course when it comes to movies like this.  Again, we're outside my preferred genres here and I hate crapping on stuff that I know that I'm not going to like.  Still, I was impressed with a bunch of stuff.  Perhaps it was the better attitude I went into it with.  Maybe I wanted to like it more because my wife was "meh" about seeing it.  But it wasn't horrible and that's a big step for me.