The Holiday (2006)
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 135
Fresh: 63 | Rotten: 72
The Holiday, while sweet and somewhat touching, lacks any surprises and eventually overstays its welcome.
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Critic Reviews: 37
Fresh: 19 | Rotten: 18
The Holiday, while sweet and somewhat touching, lacks any surprises and eventually overstays its welcome.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 473,387
My Rating
Movie Info
Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy Holiday stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as two women who exchange houses in order to get a new lease on life. After each suffers her fair share of romantic disappointments, Englishwoman Iris (Winslet) and L.A. woman Amanda (Diaz) meet on-line at a website devoted to helping people exchange houses for vacations. Each agrees to spend the Christmas holiday at the other's home. While each suffers from a minor case of culture shock, both women also end up becoming
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Cast
-
Cameron Diaz
Amanda -
Kate Winslet
Iris -
Jude Law
Graham -
Jack Black
Miles -
Eli Wallach
Arthur -
Edward Burns
Ethan -
Rufus Sewell
Jasper -
Miffy Englefield
Sophie -
Emma Pritchard
Olivia -
Sarah Parish
Hannah -
Shannyn Sossamon
Maggie -
Bill Macy
Ernie -
Shelley Berman
Norman -
Kathryn Hahn
Bristol -
John Krasinski
Ben -
Alex O'Loughlin
Kissing Couple -
Odette Annable
Kissing Couple -
Bundle Williams
Girl in Pub -
Susan Dizon
Newspaper Party Guest -
Terry Diab
Newspaper Editor -
Kenneth Danziger
Editor-in-Chief -
Hope Riley
Smith-Alcott Sarah -
Gilbert Esquivel
Gardener -
Steven Bruns
Couple on Plane -
Nikki Novak
Couple on Plane -
Judith Drake
Women in Plane -
Pamela Dunlap
Women on Plane -
Hal Douglas
Movie Trailer Narrator -
Jay Simpson
Limo Driver -
Siobhan Pestano
Couple With Dog -
Charles Dinsdale
Couple With Dog -
Sarah Flind
Market Clerk -
Darlene Ann Harris
Arthur's Nurse -
Marcell Brown
Airport Guard -
Marina Morgan
Graham's Friend -
Lynden Edwards
Graham's Friend -
Lydia Blanco
Marta -
Jon Prescott
Maggie's Boyfriend -
Patrick Cavanaugh
Young Man at WGA -
Justin Collins
Young Man at WGA
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The Holiday Trailer & Photos
All Critics (135) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (67) | Rotten (73) | DVD (14)
A leisurely feelgood rom-com.
Top CriticThe characters pace and putter around in the story like animals building their nests, and by the time they finally settle down with their mates, we have a grudging affection for them.
...The story goes on at untoward length.
...The surprises would be surprises only if this is, like, your fourth movie ever.
Like her near namesake, Meyers has quite a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.
...It's the women who come out the worst in Meyers's sexist worldview, where men are hopeless and women are helpless.
A reminder to all producers: alluding to iconic romantic comedies in a bid for legitimacy can be a dangerous game, even when you have appealing stars.
Patronizing antimatter
Dialogue hits the floor like frozen eggnog in writer/director Nancy Meyers' protracted exercise in cliché-mining.
My reaction to The Holiday was no different from my reaction to Meyers' other pieces. It's cute enough, the atmosphere is sufficiently romantic comedy-like, but somehow, for some reason, I just don't bond with it.
Stars are best part of clichéd double romance.
As a voracious consumer of chick media (I like alien shoot 'em ups too!), I tell you that the story arc is extremely surprising & delightful, and that you fellas can feel safe watching this as well.
Despite the heavy-handed parallel plotting, the writing is clever enough and the performances warm and engaging enough to make this a far better-than-average romantic comedy.
No amount of ironic gift wrapping can conceal the triteness within, in this double-plotted festive chick flick that is too long by half, and too cloyingly sweet to be healthy.
About as far removed from burning your bra as you can get. Too much of this chick flick feels like work, with the unfortunately long running time sandbagging it with a kind of cinematic jet lag.
a warm, charming, extremely clever and often hilarious romantic comedy that will be a sure-fire date movie for any guy looking to please his significant other
Meyers gives it an honest shot, but she can't distract from a paint-by-numbers plot just by having us watch it dry.
Because everyone is rich and in love, you can see the happy ending coming a mile away, but with a film like this, it's the journey that's important and not the destination.
Sweet, sentimental and sickly.
A lot of ideas are circulating and the characters have taken hold of our emotions. If only Meyers had taken the quickest way there, it would be a much better movie.
The Holiday's redeeming feature (and it's a considerable one) is the 91-year-old Eli Wallach's astute and endearing performance.
Audience Reviews for The Holiday
Telling the story of two women who swap houses, one in Britain, one in the US, to escape love and men, they eventually find themselves falling in love with those closet to the woman's house they are living in.
The plot itself is simple. So simple, that any average filmgoer will work out the ending before they have finished reading the blurb on the back of the DVD case. But despite this, "The Holiday" combines a touching, and although the phrase is perhaps the most over-used and cheesy, "heart-warming" event.
The script is nothing clever, and the camera work is average. The acting is as expected and the humour silly and a times embarrassing for the viewer. Despite all this, throughout the film, you feel yourself slowing growing more attached to the characters, even though, in my personal case, I didn't want to.
Jack Black is perhaps the funniest of the four. His good acting skills are often forgotten amongst his other starring roles as pandas, but his chemistry with Kate Winslet is excellent, and although he plays himself, as always he plays it very well.
It would be silly to say that there is anything special about "The Holiday" but, unlike the majority of rom-coms, it does have a special quality. A quality which sets it above the rest, as the audience connect with all of the characters in a unique and individual way, whilst enjoying the kind, gentle, but nice and touching story which "The Holiday" delivers.
Super Reviewer
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- Iris: Jasper--- Oh, wait, I need the lights on. [turns on a lamp] Jasper, you have never treated me right, ever!
- Jasper: Oh, bab---
- Iris: Shush! You broke my heart and you acted like it was somehow my fault, my misunderstanding, and I was too in love with you to ever be mad at you, so I just punished myself! For years! But you waltzing in here on my lovely Christmas holiday and telling me that you don't want to lose me whilst you're about to get MARRIED! Somehow newly entitles me to say, "It's over!" This-this-this twisted toxic thing between us! It's finally finished! I'm miraculously done being in love with you! Ha! I've got a life to start living, and you're not going to be in it!
- Jasper: Darling---
- Iris: Now I've got somewhere really important to be and you have got to get the hell out! [opens door] Now!
- Jasper: What exactly has gotten in to you?
- Iris: I don't know [pushes jasper out the door] but I think what I've got is something resembling, Gumption! [slams door shut]
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- Iris: And I have willingly in loved that man, for over three miserable years. The absolute worst years of my life! The worst Christmases the worst birthdays! New Year's Eve brought in by tears and Valium. These years that I've been in love have been the darkest days of my life! All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not, and will not, love me back. Oh God, Just the sight of him; heart pounding, throat thickening, absolutely can't swallow. All the usual symptoms.
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- Iris: I have found almost everything ever written about love to be true. Shakespeare said, 'Journey's end in lover's meeting.' Oh, what an extraordinary through. Personally I have not experience anything remotely close that, but I'm more then willing to believe Shakespeare had. I suppose i think about love more than anyone ever should. I'm constantly amazed by it's sheer power to alter and define out lives. It was also Shakespeare who said, "Love is blind." Now that is something I know to be true. For some, quite inexplicably, love fades. For others, love is simply lost. But then of course, love can also be found, even if just for the night. And then there is another kind of love, the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. It's called 'Unrequited Love'. Of that, I am an expert. Most love stories about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories? Those of us who fall in love alone. We are the victims of the one-sided affairs. We are the cursed of the loved ones; we are 'un-loved' ones. The walking wounded. The handicap without the advancement of a great parking spot. Yes, you are looking at one such individual.
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- Amanda: I'm Amanda. Loner, loser and complicated wreck!
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- Miles: Iris, if you were a melody... I used only the good notes.
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Foreign Titles
- Liebe braucht keine Ferien (DE)
The story gets a bit convenient right at the end and the logistics I can't even imagine, but it's all happy music and fade out by then, so I don't expect we are expected to think how the hell these relationships would ever work out.
Nice little story and a few laughs. Cameron Diaz is good also, although I didn't love her character.