Yesterday I watched the star-studded, award winning, 2006 blockbuster The Holiday. I had the vague notion that a) it was one of those iconic Christmas films that everyone ought to watch and b) I’d seen it before and it was good.
I was almost certain that the plot went as follows: four mix-matched singletons with tenuous links to each other find themselves sharing a holiday cottage for Christmas and they end up getting up to all sorts of hijinks and there’s a dog and a Christmas tree and they all end up falling in love. Now, I don’t know if this is a different film ( I have put ‘hi-jinks in a cottage film’ into Google but it didn’t come up with anything) or if it’s just that I watched this at a time in my mental development where I imagined up my own plot to blank out the true awful, bland, cliche ridden plot. After posting ‘the holiday is the best film everrrr’ as my Facebook status I feel I must come clean and lay out why exactly this film possibly the worst, most unrealistic piece of crap that has ever happened in front of my face.
1. NO ONE is as thick and love sick as Kate Winslet’s character. You would know if the bloke you fancied was getting engaged to someone in your office. You wouldn’t buy him a Christmas present. You wouldn’t then try and kill yourself. Whoever wrote her part was obviously in such a deep spiral of depression that they thought Bridget Jones wasn’t utterly pathetic enough and thought they could do a better job of writing the part of a sad, silly British woman.
2. Why the fuck isn’t Jude Law looking after his kids?????
3. Jack Black only gets with Kate because he’s on the rebound. He is literally like ‘I ended it with my girlfriend. You look fit. Can I come to your country and crash your widowed brothers New Year’s Eve because we’re both a bit sad and I reckon we can give each other pity sex’. Also, the fit girl from a Knight’s Tale would never have gone out with Jack Black anyway, especially as he’s EXTRA annoying in this film.
4. Jude Law’s wife was cheating on him cos his kids are UGLY.
5. Kate Winslet has a shitty time. A really shitty time. For a ‘romcom’ she literally gets no rom except aforementioned pity sex from exceptionally unattractive Jack Black, who at one point refers to himself in the third person by saying ‘classic Miles’. C’MON. She gets the fucking short straw with this guy. At least when Emma Thompson is miserable in Love Actually it’s heartbreaking and sad. This is just a bit pathetic and embarrassing to watch, especially after she dumps bad guy from a Knight’s Tale and does a really, really unconvincing victory dance and celebrates by taking an old bloke to HIS award ceremony. He’s having a better time in this film than she is.
6. Jude Law cannot fall in love with Cameron Diaz after half a mini break and two shags. IT’S IRRESPONSIBLE TO MAKE OUT TO YOUNG PEOPLE THIS IS THE CASE. Surely in the 21st century we’ve got past ‘forget it, we’ll make it work even though we live on different continents and our lifestyles are completely incompatible, I live down a lane and you insist on wearing stilettos and for all I know you’re as annoying as fuck most of the time’ as a fulfilling end to a love film. Why can’t we just leave it at ‘hey, this was great but it’s probably nothing more’ without the running back down the drive to a crying Jude Law in the kitchen?
Award for most unrealistic part of the plot: they would not have phone signal in that cottage.
Award for character with the most shitty, underdeveloped plot lines: Cameron Diaz. The whole not being able to cry thing? When someone asks about your parents there is no need to go into a really long winded story into how your tear ducts closed up (I find this biologically unconvincing. What about when she peels onions or she stubs her toe?) Also she gets the weird voiceover man in her head that doesn’t really do much to the plot and just makes me question THE WHOLE FUCKING FILM EVEN MORE. Last: who feeds the dog? She has a weird stare down competition with him then he’s left to go and starve or feast on the corpses of Jude Law’s neglected children. What a fucking heart-warming after thought to a beautiful story.
My only response to this film is a vague notion of disappointment and embarrassment for the representation of Englishness. Next time I want to watch a film with hi-jinks in a cottage, I’ll stick to Withnail & I.
Really Rubbish Things 