The Holiday
Words, words, words: They come gushing out of Nancy Meyers’s characters like water from a hyperactive geyser – Old Faithful on meth. And yet, even though she makes romantic comedies, amid all the talking her characters rarely say anything witty. Instead, they describe their feelings – articulately, precisely, exhaustively. They tell you everything you need to know about them – and then, in case you were in the bathroom, they tell you again. It’s as if Meyers is thinking about how her movie would play on TNT, or on JetBlue. I can only assume she never took an introductory screenwriting course, because the first thing you learn is “show, don’t tell.” She makes movies for the blind.
Yet somehow her bloated, windbaggy anti-cinema has occasional charms. I don’t want to call it “watchable,” because it’s so uninteresting to look at, but it’s certainly … tolerable. Pleasant, even. As light and sweet as a dusting of powdered sugar. Her latest, “The Holiday,” stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as fabulous, knockout-beautiful women who, inexplicably unlucky in love, switch houses over Christmas (Diaz to Surrey, England; Winslet to Los Angeles) and find men who appreciate them.
There’s nothing subversive about Meyers; “The Holiday” is unabashedly commercial, as mainstream as the Mississippi. Yet as a defender of the proud romantic-comedy tradition I appreciate the small ways Meyers tweaks its conventions. She writes from a confident female point of view: Her women are strong, complicated, neurotic, wondrous. And her men are pure fantasy: romance-novel heroes with down-home looks, sensitivity and gallantry. If you’re going to dream up the perfect guy, why not cast Jude Law and let him channel Cary Grant, all shimmering surface and droll charm? As Diaz’s catch, Law is wonderful; he reacts to her wide-open silliness with smooth and surgical timing. I also like Meyers’s unorthodox choice of Jack Black as Winslet’s dreamboat; she’s in tune with Black’s empathy and generosity. I wasn’t so thrilled by the way she weighed Black and Winslet down with lugubrious burned-by-love backstories. Diaz and Law get more time to sparkle.
As is required these days, because the rom-com has been done so many times, Meyers postmodernizes it, albeit in a way that’s easily digestible to Middle America. (Her unabashed crowd-coddling goes beyond that, really: Audiences would understand this movie in Middle Earth or Middle Andromeda.) Amanda (Diaz) owns a firm that assembles movie trailers – of course, because that’s what beautiful, perfectly toned blondes do in Hollywood – and occasionally, the voice of trailer-god Don LaFontaine will guide her into reveries about her life’s complications. Meanwhile, Iris (Winslet) gets a tour of Old Hollywood and the spirited, tough-talking heroines of its past, courtesy of the great Eli Wallach (who turned 91 yesterday – many happy returns, Eli!) as a legendary screenwriter who lives next door to Amanda. Arthur Abbott (Wallach) explains to Iris such conventions as the meet-cute and schools her on the concept of gumption by making her watch “His Girl Friday” and “The Lady Eve.” What I wonder, as Meyers pours her love of the great studio-era rom-coms onto the screen, is whether she knows how shabby her own work looks in comparison.
If I were more militant I could denounce “The Holiday,” bemoaning the fact that Meyers spent easily $75 million making this drivel while the world goes to hell around us, but it’s just not in me. It’s so frothy and it’ll give so many people a good time – even I had fun in spurts – that it’s hard to dub her the Antichrist.