What’s a “good-bad” movie? It’s the kind of flick that might have you cackling, hollering or groaning, one that is not necessarily great cinema but is great fun. It’s highly watchable even though — or maybe because — it’s memorably ridiculous. And it always has at least one element that pushes it into absurd territory.
“Love Actually,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “You’ve Got Mail” walked so that “The Holiday” could run.
Pulling D.N.A. from all these films, the 2006 rom-com from director Nancy Meyers is a BlackBerry-era tale of Christmastime love and real-estate envy starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as Amanda and Iris, both heartsick and desperate for a fresh perspective.
The women, newly betrayed by their longtime beaus, connect on a house-swap website after Amanda simply Googles “vacation spots.” (There’s no evidence that Airbnb was inspired by “The Holiday,” but it was a founded two years after the movie was released, so you decide.)
For an emotional reset over the winter break, Iris — who’s done being the side piece for her suddenly engaged co-worker — travels to Amanda’s ritzy, palm-tree-studded Los Angeles mansion. And Amanda, a workaholic who cuts movie trailers and who just discovered she was cheated on, heads to Iris’s dreamy, tucked-away, snow-clad cottage in Surrey, England. Incredibly, the décor in both still really holds up.
Enter Jude Law as Graham and Jack Black as Miles: the men who step into the picture at just the right moment (well, sort of).
The film toggles between these locations and story lines for nearly its entirety. The result: a movie that’s 50 percent witty banter and steamy sparks, 50 percent awkward prom date, and 100 percent good-bad, festive, chick-flick perfection.
What Makes It Good?
