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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > The Holiday (2006/Blu-ray + DVD-Video)

The Holiday (2006/Blu-ray + DVD-Video)

 

Picture: B+/B-     Sound: B+/B-     Extras: C-     Film: C

 

 

When it comes to making fluff films, nobody is fluffier than writer/director Nancy Meyers, whose films are often torture tests.  The latest and oddest yet is The Holiday (2006) offering the would-be auteur of cotton candy drama attempting to be artistic and profound.  It has Cameron Diaz as a wife who is being cheated on, but the Holiday season might help her.  Unfortunately, the attempts still involve slapstick that make this feel like “Christmas Time – Full Throttle” as the film tries to have it both ways, serious and funny at the same time.

 

If that was not immature enough, we get Jude Law and Rufus Sewell as near doppelgangers of each other, Jack Black in a “serious” role that does not work and is more about him being calm than anything else and the underrated Kate Winslet wasted as another woman who will meet her after they have been “6,000 miles apart” which is how long the 136 minutes of this fuzzy/phony work is.

 

Adding Eli Wallach did not save it (you’ll wish he pulled out his six shooter from Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns and start shooting up the Christmas Trees) and having Edward Burns playing another version of… Edward Burns seems outright condescending and desperate at the same time.  Coming out in March for some reason, you’ll want to mark this one “do not open ‘til X-mas” and hopefully forget where you put it.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on the DVD is not bad, but the 1080p digital High Definition version is that much better, with the kind of good depth and even some detail the DVD cannot deliver.  Dean Cundey, A.S.C., shot a much better holiday film, John Carpenter’s Halloween!  At least he knows how to bring the seasons alive.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on both discs are fairly good, but the PCM 5.1 mix exclusive to Blu-ray is clearer, smoother and will help you stay more awake through it all.  Too bad Hans Zimmer’s score is a sometimes-dippy snoozer.  Extras include several trailers for other Sony releases, a making of featurette and audio commentary with Meyers and many guests.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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