Last Holiday: Review By moviegeek

With her addicting charm and charisma, Queen Latifah steals the show here, even though this is her show to begin with. Placed into the most ridiculous and amusing scenarios, she proves that intelligently absurd acting can warm up the most immature and dumb sequences.

Latifah plays a retail clerk who, after running into a man of her dreams, learns of a terminal illness that allows her only weeks to live. Impressed to make the most of the life she has left, she goes on a fantastical journey funded by her life savings. Along the way, a retail executive staying at the same hotel becomes nervous that she is not all who she says she is.

There are a few hysterical sequences like a runaway ski scene, a base jumping moment, and spa treatments. I was, however, underwhelmed with the amount of big laughs in this movie. Latifah does her best work here, but no one else is very good in the picture. The moments aren't always as funny as Latifah is, an uneasy, yet pleasing combination.

Last Holiday has a real spirit to its pacing. There is just the right balance of heart and liveliness to keep the movie afloat. This movie was like a breath of fresh air amidst a storm of similar, yet painful, pictures.

The plot meanders its way to a conclusion I saw coming a mile away, but I was unsatisfied with the way it ended. All of the heart and passion that is built into a very solid movie evaporates tediously in the last 15 minutes. There was opportunity for a real and honest movie, but it squanders its own potential.

Nevertheless, in all the things that could have gone wrong here, Last Holiday avoids a great majority of it. Queen Latifah gives her best comedic performance, shining in this star vehicle. I watched this movie constantly smiling, ceaselessly charmed, and endlessly amused.