Rent The Holiday (2006)

When Heartbreak Becomes a Property Programme - The Holiday review by griggs

The Holiday is basically a rom-com about rom-coms, with Nancy Meyers turning heartbreak into a property show: beautiful kitchens, soft lighting, and problems that can be solved by a brisk walk and a hot drink. ?

It also can’t stop name-dropping cinema history. Arthur (Eli Wallach) gives Iris a crash course in “leading lady” energy, and the script outright borrows his “meet-cute” example from Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch). Iris and Miles even geek out over The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges), while Metropolis (Fritz Lang) pops up on the shelves like a film-nerd wink. And there’s that wonderful old-Hollywood aside where Iris clocks Arthur’s “Louis B. Mayer’s office boy?” origin story (well, via Western Union).

The soundtrack is doing its own tour of duty too: Wham!, Brenda Lee, The Killers, Jet, Frou Frou, Simon & Garfunkel, Al Green, Kylie, Imogen Heap, Aretha, plus film-score gags performed in-scene by Jack Black (yes, Chariots of Fire, Jaws, Raiders March, even the Tara Theme). ?

One last nerd note: the film has Arthur claiming Cary Grant was “from Surrey” — he wasn’t. Grant was born in Bristol which makes that little exchange a proper howler.

Christmas RomCom - Heartwarming & Fun - The Holiday review by GI

A Christmas romcom that goes all out to pull your heartstrings and mostly succeeds even though the ending is entirely predictable. A much loved favourite that sits alongside Love Actually (2003) as one of those films that is always worth a watch on a cold winter evening in front of the fire around Christmas time. What I particularly like about this is the contrast set up in the story between the quintessential chocolate box cottage in the English countryside and the palatial, tech heavy mansion in sunny Los Angeles. The four key stars play this just right and the casting is spot on for this story. Kate Winslet (an English rose) plays Iris, a journalist who is lovesick over her former boyfriend (Rufus Sewell) getting engaged to someone else and Cameron Diaz is Amanda, a glamorous business woman who discovers her boyfriend (Edward Burns) has been unfaithful. In their despair at their respective love lives they decide to escape and find each other through a house swap website. So each sets off to spend time in the house of the other. This begins the clash of cultures theme built into the film. Amanda especially struggles with the simplicity of rustic life in England while Iris is overwhelmed by the opulence of LA. Into the rather obvious comedy of their situations comes the men in the form of Jude Law as Iris's brother who quickly falls for Amanda but has some baggage he doesn't know how to reveal and Jack Black as Miles, a colleague of Amanda's who meets Iris and they soon bond but he too has some emotional baggage to deal with. It's fairly obvious what these two couples will end up like but interestingly their respective stories are different from one another and the film neatly cuts between the two at just the right moments. Law and Black are excellent here too and Black especially holds back on his more manic screen persona. There's a touching side story involving Eli Wallach as an aging Hollywood screenwriter and a cameo from Dustin Hoffmann that if you blink you might miss but will make you smile. This is a gentle, heartwarming romcom that has no pretensions it just aims to make you feel good and it does just that.