The Holiday: Critic Reviews

Eat up, chick-flickaholics! Even if you know it's not good for you.

The Holiday is a tale of two women, two houses, two love interests -- Jude Law pairs with Cameron Diaz, Jack Black gets lucky with Kate Winslet -- but it's also about movie love.

The Holiday's redeeming feature (and it's a considerable one) is the 91-year-old Eli Wallach's astute and endearing performance.

If you're willing to embrace a bit of corniness for the sake of some incisive humor, a few poignant moments and enjoyable scenarios, make time for The Holiday.

This overproduced romantic comedy doesn't even qualify as fluff; it's flat, featureless plastic.

The Holiday is a lark, with pretensions to be more.

Like her near namesake, Meyers has quite a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

The Holiday is a harmlessly cheery confection.

...The story goes on at untoward length.

...The surprises would be surprises only if this is, like, your fourth movie ever.

You wonder if [director] Meyers was so focused on establishing her main characters as frustrated, lonely and wanting that she forgot about the 'interesting' part.

The problem is that happy endings this strident and overextended begin to seem somewhat desperate.

It is a fizzy champagne cocktail that provides a pleasant buzz, many smiles, and Jude Law with the role of his career.

The Holiday has the materialist airhead brightness of a Christmas department store window, with handsomely outfitted mannequins arranged around an artificial fire. It's glamorous and sentimental but it doesn't touch the heart.

Obviously intended as a romantic throwback to the good old days of Hollywood, The Holiday instead comes off as a self-indulgent, insipid piece of seasonal trash.

Give yourself a holiday and avoid this movie.

A movie so loaded with charm that it makes you glow all over and puts a smile in your heart.

Lusciously crafted at every level, from Dean Cundey's flattering cinematography to the even more flattering selection of L.A. and U.K. locations.

Complaining about the gooey and generic The Holiday is as useless as railing against fruitcake -- this is a slick, throwaway chick flick designed to provide nothing more than mindless diversion between bouts of shopping.

Any holiday movie with a dollop of sweetness and a touch of wistful deserves a little slack at this time of year. This one is pleasant enough, but The Holiday won't be one you'll remember after the eggnog has worn off.

...It's the women who come out the worst in Meyers's sexist worldview, where men are hopeless and women are helpless.

The Holiday, like the holidays, will require some girding up, and is best met halfway with a self-immunizing smile.

Meyers' movies would be far less offensive if they were simply shiny, shallow entertainments. But they always read like pronouncements, monitor readings of how 'real' women think and feel.

The characters pace and putter around in the story like animals building their nests, and by the time they finally settle down with their mates, we have a grudging affection for them.

Sloppy writing, an overindulgent editor, and poor casting have taken an intriguing premise and transformed it into an uneven mess.