Even Kate Winslet Can't Save a Bad Movie

The Holiday opens today. I love dumb, escapist romantic comedies. And this one promised two: Cameron Diaz romancing Jude Law and Kate Winslet involved with Jack Black. I figured at least one them would be vaguely satisfying fun. Unfortunely, they both go very, very wrong.

Cameron Diaz plays a powerful businesswoman who keeps her men at arm's length. She hasn't cried since mummy and daddy broke up when she was a teen. Will she open her heart to Jude Law? Can she get in touch with her feelings and let the hurt in her be released? Gag. The idea of Diaz as a powerful, remote businesswoman doesn't fly. She's a bubbly, freewheeling gal; there's not a cold bone in her body. So Diaz flails about (literally...she careens about her LA mansion and the tiny cottage she sublets from Winslet,) trying to find a voice for a character that she cannot embody. It's hard to watch her, especially in the agonizing scenes she spends alone. She's not a horrible actress, she's been quite good in Being John Malkovich and In Her Shoes, but her half of the movie is doomed from the time she was cast. Even the charming Jude Law, who can make wooden dialogue sound natural, can't save the storyline.

But, we have another shot to find at least an entertaining hour in the theater. The grand Kate Winslet plays a lovelorn English reporter who goes to LA to soothe her broken heart. Winslet, although gorgeous, manages to play and frumpy and insecure quite well. But she gets entangled in a unfortunate subplot involving one Eli Wallach playing a great Hollywood screenwriter of yore. He's supposedly the guy who added "kid" to "here's looking at you." Winslet, in one of many agonizing montages in the film, TEACHES THE HANDICAPPED WALLACH TO WALK over the course of an afternoon. Eegads. It only gets worse as Winslet half-heartedly gets involved in one of those movie romances that doesn't seem too romantic; her paramour is Jack Black. They have the romantic chemistry of Dorothy and the Tin Man.

The final blow: both Winslet and Diaz have their own individual singing-rock-songs-out-loud-while-dancing-in-your-PJs scenes. Of the terrible images I will carry away from this movie - Jack Black's home-permed hair, Jack Black singing movie theme songs in blockbuster video store, Jack Black giving Winslet a lingering kiss (ick!!,) Diaz and Law in a hiding-behind-evergreens-and-punching-each-other-playfully montage - none will scar me as the image of the regal Winslet playing air guitar on a pillow.