"I've left a guy for a film, but I've never left a film for a guy," Nathalie Baye says during Day for Night, Truffaut's love letter to the movie business. The animating idea of that film -- that moviemakers are entitled to live in a world of their own, without interference from reality -- is one that 90 percent of West L.A. residents would agree with. The Holiday plays like that world come to life. It's a movie by key grips, for script supervisors. Two out of the four main characters, Amanda (Cameron Diaz) and Miles (Jack Black) are more-than-comfortable film professionals who have conquered all of life's difficulties, except for finding someone as perfect as them for mating. Miles, a score composer, can't walk through Blockbuster without humming themes. "Two syllables -- da-dum! -- genius!" he says of John Williams. Amanda, who cuts trailers, has that familiar 'voice of God' from the trailers intruding on her thoughts. Since the film has digested the wise teachings of Gwyneth Paltrow, both Miles and Amanda will eventually get intelligent, sophisticated mates from Britain.
Amanda gets the ball rolling after she's dumped by her smarmy-guy boyfriend, Ed Burns. "You're just not willing to be what I need," he informs her. Ready for a vacation, she sits down at a computer and googles up a travel site. "Where do they speak English?" she asks herself, before clicking a big button that says "England." That was easy. She's soon negotiating some vague transaction called a "house exchange," which is exactly what it sounds like: The person on the other end of the modem will show up at your door and expect you to show up at theirs, for a specified period of time. In the real world, of course, the person who arrived on your doorstep would be the BTK Killer, but this is Movie World, so Amanda happens upon Kate Winslet as her swapper. This leads to one of the more hilarious -- does it matter if it's intentional or not? -- scenes in recent memory: a montage of Winslet hanging out the window of a cab, taking in the sights of fantastic, sunny L.A.
Once she's done running from room to room in Amanda's temporarily abandoned mansion, Winslet is out and about in the neighborhood, palling around with 172-year old Eli Wallach, who plays a screenwriter claiming to have added the "kid" to "Here's looking at you, kid," although he can't remember which house he lives in. He invites Winslet back to his place, where, in a meta moment that has to be seen to be believed, she spies an Oscar on his shelf and gushes over it. Wow, an Oscar! The film isn't ambitious enough to actually have the four-time-bridesmaid Winslet pick up the Oscar, but it's hilarious enough anyway. Meanwhile, across the pond, ditzy Amanda is driving on the wrong side of the road and snuggling into Winslet's cozy cottage, outside the hustle and bustle of the London newspaper she is on vacation from. Amanda is soon visited by Jude Law, Winslet's single brother. Realizing the serendipity of the two best-looking people in the world meeting by chance at a remote English cottage, they smartly agree that they should immediately screw.
In all fairness, if you can't enjoy The Holiday on the meta level, like I did, then you may not enjoy it at all. The jokes are older than Eli Wallach and there are no big surprises or off-kilter happenings in store, other than a limp moment early on of suicide contemplation on Winslet's part, after she's dumped for the umpteenth time by Rufus Sewell. He plays the kind of character the British tabloids would refer to as a "love rat." The film also suffers from a noticeable lack of chemistry between Winslet and her appointed, Jack Black. The lack of sparks between the two actors is so noticeable that the film's third act zigs and zags to keep them having their relationship consummated, probably because the audience wouldn't buy it. They don't strike the eye as a good match. (By the way, can we put to rest the notion that Winslet is a Plain Jane?) Some of their later scenes involve a lot of looking-over-the-shoulder acting and reaction shots of the "filmed a year later" variety.
The Holiday is what it is -- a film so pumped full of stardust that it's ready to go supernova. It bets all its chips on the idea that you will lay down good money (and be entertained) by scenes like the one where Cameron Diaz makes faces at a cute dog and he makes faces back at her. And scenes like the one where one star tells the other: "You are just insanely good-looking." And scenes like the one where a star is told, with great earnestness: "You're the Leading Lady, but you keep acting like the Best Friend!" At one point, the film even contrives to have all the actors in the same place at once, whereupon they drop all pretense of character and launch into a spontaneous four-way dance, which I would call the 'We Are Movie Stars And You Aren't' dance. It looks like something between a conga-line and the kind of freestyle dancing an office secretary does after too much egg-nog. Since I laughed through the entire film, how could I not recommend it?