Director: Nancy Meyers
Running Time: 121 mins
Certificate: 12A
Release Date: October 2nd 2015 (UK)
I’ll come clean straight away, we have two problems here. In my humble opinion Nany Meyers’ The Holiday was a true low point in cinema, an absolutely wretched affair – lazy, clichéd, corny, utterly without charm and with dialled in performances. Problem 2 is the De Niro syndrome – what on earth happened to the actor who everyone agreed was the finest of his generation. Pacino has his many fans, but De Niro admirers simply mutter Raging Bull and that’s the argument won. So how has this man gone from that peak to decades, literally decades, of mediocre, middling dramas and simply unfunny comedies?
Actually there’s a third problem here, the film’s central idea, which has, in true Hollywood tradition, been done before, and very recently. It’s The Devil Wears Prada, but this time with Anne Hathaway in the Meryl Streep role, and De Niro in the junior position lately vacated by the over-promoted…Anne Hathaway! [Read more…]