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Two women life-swap their way to laughs and love in this feel-good festive flick from writer-director Nancy Meyers.

A romantic comedy about two women who swap homes and live online for Christmas The Holiday stars Kate Winslet (Titanic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hideous Kinky, The Life of David Gale), Cameron Diaz (The Mask, Shrek, Being John Malkovich, A Life Less Ordinary), Jude Law (Alfie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, A.I, eXistenZ) and Jack Black (Rock School, Tenacious D: In The Pick of Destiny, Orange County, King Kong).

Love Is Strange

This latest take on the strange ways of love, and the high price of neglecting your own heart from writer-director Nancy Meyers sees two women life-swap their way to laughs and love in a feel-good festive flick. Kate Winslet plays Iris Simpkins - a jobbing journalist on a London newspaper (it's meant to The Daily Telegraph) who finds herself stuck in a dreadful relationship with a colleague who won’t commit to her – and who announces his engagement (to somebody else, and in front of the whole newsroom, naturally) just in time for the holidays...



Meanwhile – on the other side of the Atlantic – we are introduced to Amanda Woods (played by Cameron Diaz). She is a glamorous, hugely successful film industry executive who owns her own company and for whom everything seems to be going just swimmingly – until she finds out her long-term boyfriend has been unfaithful to her...

Iris – who lives by herself in a tiny cottage in a tiny village in the Cotswolds - decides that what she really needs is a change – to get away from it all. In short: she needs a holiday.

These two women – both desperate for a change of scene after their bouts of man trouble - agree to swap houses for the festive season. Travelling in opposite directions (Amanda to London, Iris to Los Angeles), each finds herself alone in an unfamiliar town, but – this being a romantic comedy with the emphasis on the holiday audience in popcorn munching feel-good mood – they both soon find they’ve not just swapped homes, but also a little of each others’ lives along the way. Naturally for such beautiful people, you can guarantee that neither of the pair remains much of a stranger in her new surroundings for long...

"Hilarious"

This is what the reviewers have been saying so far:

“Hilarious & heart-warming.” – Grazia

"At 131 minutes, the film feels a bit overlong and unwieldy but the length gives Meyers and her starry cast the chance to probe a little more deeply than you find in your average laugh-a-minute romantic comedy." - Colin MacLean (for movies.monstersandcritics.com)

“Funny & sexy...everything a romantic comedy should be.” – Cosmopolitan

"Cameron and Jude are supposed to be the beautiful ones; Kate and Jack clearly less so. And yet it is Winslet, by persistently looking like a real human being, and maintaining an air of cheerful good humour, who weirdly emerges from this train-wreck of a film with her class intact." - Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian).

“The perfect date movie.” – Mark Adams (The Sunday Mirror)

"Inconsolable (despite her luxury, snow-spangeled cottage: an hilarious Hollywood idea of England clearly beyond her means as a marriage announcements columnist)...Iris implausibly arranges a last-minute Internet house-swap with a similarly heart-broken stranger...The writing is as Devil Wears Prada-smart as it is unabashedly glossy schmaltz." - Larushka Iva-Zadeh (Metro).

“A must see.” - Heat

One-woman dynamo that she seems to be, in addition to writing and directing The Holiday, Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, What Women Want) has also produced the romantic comedy with Bruce Block and Suzanne Farwell, for Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures.

For more information, check out the films’ official website: www.the-holiday-movie.com

The Holiday (rated 12A) is out on DVD 26 March, from Sony Pictures.

More information available in DVD / Home Video, Humour