Students Last Name 1 Students First and Last Name ENG 101 Professor Bolton Due Date of Final

Copy The Holiday: An Atypical Romantic Comedy In the film The Holiday, we meet Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) and Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz), who live on opposite sides of the world. In the beginning of the movie, Iris learns that the love of her life is engaged to someone else, and Amanda discovers that her boyfriend has been cheating on her. Amanda decides to take a vacation and gets in touch with Iris through a home exchange website. The two women switch houses for two weeks, with Iris going to California and Amanda going to England. During their vacations, they make new friends and boyfriends while realizing what has been missing in their lives at home. The Holiday is a great film because of the good acting, the interesting plot, and the emotional music. One thing that makes The Holiday more than worth a watch is its acting. Kate Winslet plays Iris, and Cameron Diaz plays Amanda Woods. In the beginning of the film, Iris is seen at home after discovering her ex-boyfriend (whom she still loves) is engaged. After lighting the stove to make a pot of tea, tears streaming down her face, she leans over and inhales the fumes, presumably trying to kill herself. She is stopped only when her computer beeps to indicate she has a message. In this scene, we see her as an overly emotional character, and it is believable because Winslet continuously sniffles, wipes her nose, and even places her hand to her forehead to indicate her distress. Conversely, when Amanda is breaking up with her boyfriend early in the movie, she is throwing shoes at him and yelling about him sleeping with his receptionist at work. She doesnt cry at all. She is immediately seen as a powerful woman, and Diazs use of hand
This sample essay, a film evaluation, is written in MLA formatthere is a video on D2L that will demonstrate the steps to getting your essay in proper MLA format, and additional explanations are provided at the end of Chapter 50 of your Norton textbook.

Students Last Name 2 gestures make it very realistic. She throws her hands in the air when frustrated at her boyfriends responses, and she puts her hand to her chest when she asks him to swear on his life that he didnt cheat. While these scenes demonstrate the acting ability of Winslet and Diaz, what is most impressive about their acting is the range they portray. By the end of the film, Iris is the powerful one: her ex-boyfriend comes to visit her, and she kicks him out of the house in very Amanda-like fashion, with hand-gestures and facial expressions. In England, Amanda falls in love with Iriss brother, Graham, and cries heavily when she has to leave him. Both women are able to be both powerful and emotional, demonstrating the acting abilities of Winslet and Diaz. In addition to the realistic acting, the plot of The Holiday makes it good. The film is a romantic comedy, and many films in that genre have the same generic plot: boy and girl meet, they fall in love, they break up (often with some twist in the plot), then they get back together. What makes The Holiday different is that it manages to fit two romantic comedies into one film. While Amanda is in England falling for Graham, Iris is in California spending time with Miles. These are two completely unrelated plots occurring at the same time, and we see both of them throughout the film. Furthermore, each plot breaks the general tradition of the romantic comedy: Amanda and Graham never really break up, and Iris and Miles dont go on their first date until the end of the movie. These twists on the typical romantic comedy make The Holiday different and brilliant. The final reason the film is great is its music. Early in the film, the songs being played are traditional Christmas songs, but the majority of the music in the movie is instrumental. Lyrics arent needed to explain what is going on in these moments because the music does so impressively. For example, in the scene where Iris kicks her ex-boyfriend out of the house (after

Students Last Name 3 he has unexpectedly shown up to visit), the music starts out slowly and softlya few notes play romantically in the background. However, as she begins her speech to him of how she is over him, the music speeds up and gets louder, indicating to the audience that she has now become powerful. Like the music, she started out quietly, but she now has the gumption (as she calls it) to say what she thinks and feels. The same happens to Amanda. At the end of the film, she tells Graham bye and heads for the airport. While in the car, she begins to crysomething she hasnt done since she was a child. The music playing is slow, quiet, and romantic, and we realize that she is not the same unemotional character we encountered at the beginning of the film. Once she realizes this and asks the driver to take her back to Graham, she too gets music similar to that of Iriss. Both women are powerful at the end, but in very different ways, and the music selections reflect the changing emotions they experience throughout the film. In conclusion, The Holiday is a great film. It offers realistic characters and acting, a plot that is original compared to most romantic comedies, and music choices that reflect the emotions in the film. If we cant take a vacation whenever wed like to get away, at least theres a film that lets us live the experience vicariously through its characters.

Students Last Name 4 Works Cited The Holiday. Dir. Nancy Meyers. Perf. Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Jack Black. Columbia Pictures, 2006. Film.