"The Holiday" (2006) [24/07/07]

This film had things in it that not only caught me off guard but they thoroughly confused me. Even now, I'm sure I didn't catch all of what was thrown at me.
I like that the film wasn't complicated by having too many actors (though that can also be a huge downfall for a film when it means the director and leading actor are simply arrogant and careless). I like that the two main stories that ran concurrently were not identical. Of course the "they get together in the end" factor was obvious from the previews I saw last year but other than that, there were details which made the whole thing seem less cheap, surprizingly more plausible and more entertaining. I like how Iris, the woman who ended up in L.A., was able to grow a great friendship with a brilliant writer, an elderly man who threw a Chaunnakah party in her house, and that seemed almost to be the most focal aspect for her story; the falling-in-love part happened as a sideswipe, boy-next-door kind of thing.
The character Graham, played by Jude Law, he was strangely complicated and delightful and didn't make excuses or offer explanations for why he was the way he was. He was a very atypical Hollywood film character. I like that.
Jack Black's character, Miles, made me laugh out lout many times in a few scenes because he was singing bits of soundtracks while at the video store. His face is crazy and the way he sings is so exaggerated... yet so accurate. Love it.
Also, Dustin Hoffman made a little cameo when Jack Black picked up The Graduate but I felt weird that I was the only one in the room who got the reference.

There were three or four moments when Amanda was by herself reflecting on her life and a movie trailer voice-over would describe what she was thinking/feeling/going through at that time in a rather insensitive way. It took me a while to discover that it was purely her imagination and not some Stranger-than-Fiction-esque comical narrator but I love that ambiguity.

The film was not bad... I would probably never watch it again except for more acadmic/research(-ish) reasons OR just to see the scene with Jack Black.

7/10 (on its own)
8/10 (for Jack Black)