My movie for Christmas 2020. Down in a Deep Internet Rabbit hole, I happened across an interview that Stephen Colbert had with Kate Winslet. Colbert mention this film as a great Holiday movie even though it had almost nothing to do with Christmas. I scheduled it up for viewing on Christmas day.
I got two romantic comedies tales for the price of one ($2.99 on Amazon Prime). Aside from immediately creating in my mind the question, whatever happened to Carmen Diaz, one of our damsels in distress, I got sucked into the creativity of the writers when they contrived a house swap between Diaz and her equally lovestruck counterpart in Britian, Kate Winslet. We find Diaz's Character Amanda, who owns a company that develops film trailers, living in the proverbial lap of luxury with her home on Sunset Boulevard and her money driven life style, is in a terrible long term relationship with her boyfriend, Ethan, who is played by Edward Burns. I now there are going ot be women out there that are going to think how can any relationship with Edward Burns be bad, but trust me he sells it.
Amanda turns to the internet to find a place where she can just get away. She discovers a charming cottage in England and sends an inquiry. Iris is home brooding over her love interests announcement of his engagement to one of her co-workers. Iris is a reporter for a newspaper and gets the Christmas assignment to write about the couples wedding announcement. She in turn wants to get away.
Iris messages Amanda that the cottage is only available by house swap. Amanda agrees they both travel to the others home and the adventures begin.
Notable in this film are the many cameo appearances besides Edward Burns, the touching sub plot built around character played by Eli Wallach and what may have been a breakout role by Jack Black. Fair warning. If your going to tell two stories, you need twice the time. In this case, the running time is two hour and fifteen minutes. Oh yeah, there will be cute kids and dogs.