The Holiday: B

If I were so compelled I could write a review of this latest rom-com from the likes of Nancy Meyers and Cameron Diaz with such phrases as "light as air" and "touching in all the right places". I could also write it with words like "woefully self-indulgent" and "a movie that deals in cliches as readily as it does in heart". To say these things though, and only these things, about such a heady comedy would do it a disservice and would in fact send you into a multiplex unprepared to watch the Feel Good Movie of the Year.

Ever since 2003, writer-director Nancy Meyers has been aiming for something deeper, more authentic in that tired genre of chick flicks.That isn't to say she hasn't been a fan of the rote and regular before: her 2000 confection What Women Want was a clever by-the-numbers romantic-comedy. However with this overstuffed latest offering starring Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, and Jack Black, Meyers is going for the movie verison of alternative cabaret: quirky, heartfelt, and undeniably enjoyable. She hasn't quite hit the high-water mark set by her assured and witty adult comedy Something's Gotta Give of three years ago, but she's trying. This is more cabaret-ish.

Iris (Kate Winslet), a London journalist, and Amanda (Cameron Diaz), a movie advertiser, are two neurotic women (cliche #1) who's love lives stink (cliche #2) and who need to get away...perhaps to "improve" (cliche #3) so they switch houses to get away from it all (cliche #4). When I said the movie was ridiculously self-indulgent I meant it. The first half of the movie is spent watching two radiant leading laides cavort about spouting long-winded monologues and dancing to good music in bed. It builds on you though: when Amanda meets Graham (Jude Law) and Iris meets Miles (Jack Black) the whole pictures takes on a synthetic sheen of glossy affection and it works. As the quartet (soon to be joined by Eli Wallach as a Hollywood old-hat) circle around each other they're stripped away of their indulgence and, in essence, so is Nancy Meyers. Though it may have seemed to aim for a low-brown piece of chunky chick-lit the movie in fact is the opposite: a zesty, emotional comedy that is everything an excellent romance movie should be and rarely ever is.

Forget the story for a second, what about the actors? Meyers gets her cast to perform their very best. Jack Black tones down his mania, Jude Law ups his chivilrousness, Eli Wallach is that hilarious and lovable fifth wheel, Kate Winslet reveals her sexy sadness (last seen perhaps in Titanic), and Cameron Diaz sizzles with happiness and beauty. Though the movie is in many ways a cookie-cutter confection of the holiday movie machine there is heart in the batter and perhaps brains to boot.