PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/05/06)

Nancy Meyers makes the kinds of films that people complain no one makes anymore. The Holiday is the type of welcome diversion that only Meyers still seems to specialize — a romantic comedy where Barbara Stanwyck and Rosalind Russell would have been just as natural as Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet and where the one liners fly like confetti.

The Holiday, no weightier than those frilly shards of paper, covers the same territory of high class women with high class problems that Meyers has focused on in her previous two films, Something's Gotta Give and What Women Want. Yet this is Meyers' best film to date because, unlike her previous efforts, it occasionally does the unexpected. Iris and Diaz's Amanda are lovelorn career women who have it all except a man. They trade their houses in Surrey, England and Beverly Hills, respectively, hoping for a little R & R and a change of scenery. It's there that the film finds its legs.

Amanda, whose job is making movie trailers, steps on the plane to England, and begins seeing her life unfold before her like a teaser, complete with Mr. Movie Voice and the blaring pop music that typically accompanies them. Both a wakeup call to Amanda and the audience, The Holiday begins to start feeling like the breezy romp it was intended to be. Amanda is almost immediately drawn to Iris's brother Graham, played by Jude Law. Iris, meanwhile, gets comfortable in Amanda's palatial Beverly Hills home and starts up a friendship with an elderly neighbor, a Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter played by Eli Wallach. Jack Black soon shows up as Miles, a film composer and friend of Amanda, and Iris finds she has two new men in her life.

Meyers' script focuses less on the characters worrying about life after the holiday and focusing more on the here and now — something that the film is richer for as a whole. Winslet, Diaz, and Law all ease into their roles despite the fact that the characters are fairly non-complex archetypes. Black, on the other hand, plays Miles in the same hushed tone that he brought to Carl Denham in last year's King Kong. It's a a touch of restraint that gives the actor an air of unpredictability, but also demonstrates he's acting. Still, no one ever criticized screwball comedies of the 1940s for being too Hollywood. The Holiday wears its Tinseltown credentials on its sleeve and provides the kind of escapist entertainment that's been so lacking thus far into the winter season.

— Stephen Saito