Picking Nits
A Telegraph wedding reporter owning that cottage; nobody has family at Christmas; Christmas Day and Boxing Day skipped; no vetting for the home swap; the bad-at-sex plot line; 'great' as Amanda's only adjective; Jude Law's daughters having cell phones; Jude Law too tan and too available; Iris's frumpy tan wardrobe; no rain, only snow; Santa Anas in December; the red bikini; the airport drive on the PCH; the driver who stops short of the cottage; everyone dropping their jobs
In the discussion (19)
Approx. transcript time · 01:00:56Read transcript
- A wedding reporter for the Telegraph owning a picturesque cottage on par with the Brentwood mansion is a forever rom-com trope; the 40-minute commute is appreciated but not bought, unless it is family money.
- Where are these people's families? Everyone just goes away for Christmas with no parents, siblings or obligations; Jude Law did not even know Kate Winslet was gone, though she made the plan the night before and tried to tell him; even Eli Wallach has no grandkids or nieces around.
- For a movie called The Holiday with Christmas music and a Christmas Eve scene where Jack Black finds his girlfriend with someone else, Christmas Day is fast-forwarded through, Boxing Day is never mentioned, and there are no Christmas trees except at Jude Law's house; a Hanukkah dinner and the British sense of holiday as vacation may explain the broader appeal, but why skip Christmas Day.
- There is no vetting process for the home swap: they are just IMing like AOL in 1999, a sweet meet cute reminiscent of You've Got Mail, with no key exchange, house cleaning or preparation, and an assumption that neither will rip the other's house apart.
- Cameron Diaz's sex life as a plot line is baffling: her long-term boyfriend called her bad at sex and they stayed together, so why is she surprised he cheated; Jude Law then affirms her several times as a rebuke to the other guy; they had not had sex in a year, so what does he know.
- Giving a competent character 'I'm really bad at sex' as her relatable flaw, like making rom-com women fall down, is called sexist and super weird; she raises it just before sex with a man she never expects to see again, and a solutions-oriented L.A. woman would have taken classes and done reading.
- 'Great' is the only adjective Cameron Diaz's character knows, from the magical tent to the day; it is called bad writing, or a sign she lacks words for happiness and has not been around children, but the movie does not lean into her being a vapid L.A. person.
- In 2006 Jude Law's daughters, both under five, have their own cell phones to call him; a mother on the panel says her kids got phones around 11 when they started club sports, and iPads would be more plausible when cell phones had been mainstream for only five years.
- Jude Law randomly stays out all night at Cameron Diaz's while his kids are home, with grandparents mentioned but never seen; he is logistically too available; the phones are probably a basic error needed so the names on the phone make the Sophie and Olivia reveal work.
- Craig pointed out that Jude Law is very tan for a man in England in mid-December, blamed on Talented Mr. Ripley eight years before; Kate Winslet's wardrobe is too many tans, whites and creams, Diane Keaton's Something's Gotta Give clothes made frumpy, even though she looks like old Hollywood glamour in the pool one-piece, which reads as bad studio notes about making her relatable.
- It never rains in the movie, it only snows, which the director's commentary says never even sticks in England and had to be made to stick; London is paralyzed on the rare snow days, so give us the England rain, and Jude Law would still be hot wet.
- Do the Santa Anas really last to December? Peak season is now, in November; they can happen but the film uses them because people do not know, and the commentary says they were added because Santa Anas blew during filming.
- Jasper's line about the little red bikini that unties at the back makes no sense since all little bikinis tie at the back, unless she owns two red bikinis, one front-clasp and one tie-back.
- The drive from the airport somehow ends up on the PCH heading south from Malibu, then Ocean onto San Vicente with a Sunset sign planted to make Santa Monica look like Bel Air; something was wrong there, but it is a great view.
- The black-car driver refuses to drive down to the Cotswolds house, making her drag her suitcase a mile and a half in heels and nearly die, which never happens; Cameron Diaz reportedly called this her most physical film because of the running, and interviews fixated on her hitting her head on the beam.
- How does Iris get up to her own home if the cab driver would not? She has Amanda's Mini since they exchange cars, but it does not track with the cab; the driver is not a five-star rating.
- A late nitpick: they all have involved jobs and just drop everything, with Catherine Hahn, John Krasinski and the trailer people never heard from again; L.A. does shut down from mid-December to New Year's, but for a society reporter with Christmas Eve weddings and parties it is less believable.
- During the scene discussion, Jude Law's daughters seemed too well adjusted for having lost their mother a year ago, flagged for the nitpick section.
- During aged-best, pulling onto Sunset off the PCH from the airport with no cars around was flagged as a nitpick for later.