Spring Break
'Holiday' presents confused message
By: Ian Pugh
Issue date: 1/13/06 Section: Entertainment
Originally published: 1/13/06 at 12:38 PM EST
Last update: 1/13/06 at 12:37 PM EST
Originally published: 1/13/06 at 12:38 PM EST
Last update: 1/13/06 at 12:37 PM EST
I hesitate to put a spoiler warning in front of this review, but hell, why not - spoiler warning! If you think that Queen Latifah with a terminal disease will actually die at the end of the movie, then maybe you deserve Last Holiday. You deserve the latent, irrational hatred for other cultures, you deserve the horror that is LL Cool J and you especially deserve all the predictable "live life to the fullest" speeches, which have never been staler.
New Orleans resident Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah, who always deserves better) is your average movie character whose life is a pathetic attempt at foreshadowing: She has a crappy job at a retail store, an unrequited love (LL Cool J) and a book just chock full of unrealized dreams - literally. So, no surprises when a comical Indian doctor (Ranjit Chowdhry) diagnoses her with one of those fictional diseases that filmmakers use to avoid being called insensitive, and gives her three weeks before she hits the pine box.
This revelation gives Georgia the opportunity to finally live out her dreams, empty out her bank account and act the ignorant American in Prague. It's there that she discovers that furri'ners talk funny (A fancy hotel's name is pronounced "poop.") and that they actually have a way of life that is, shock of shocks, not exactly as it is in America. Sassing her way through bitchy clothiers and German lesbians, Georgia throws around money left and right in a last-ditch effort to live the good life. She gets to stick it to The Man, too, as she meets up with Matthew Kragen (Timothy Hutton, a poor man's Christopher McDonald), the big boss of the chain of stores for which Georgia works; through a series of "hilarious" misunderstandings, he and his Capitol Building cronies believe her to be an eccentric millionaire.
So beyond the thoroughly threadbare plot and uninteresting rich-people-do-this sequences, what else does Last Holiday have to offer? Why, it's our old friend hypocrisy. Sure, the film occasionally has class and race issues on its mind: Kragen asks an African-American senator from Louisiana (Giancarlo Esposito) to identify Georgia, only to get the (reasonable) response, "I don't know everyone who's black." But of course, this scene directly precedes a prelude back to America, where Dr. Comical Indian meditates while on his break. It's orchestrated to get a big laugh from the audience because, tee-hee, silly Indian man, that's not American! Oh, and there's the French chef (Gerard Depardieu, inviting a chorus of "What happened to you?") who is treated in the condescending manner of "one of the good ones," yet the film still manages to throw in a few jokes about how his accented English sounds unintelligible. Apparently it's all right to generalize some cultures, as long as you find the right ones to generalize.
Even after all of that, Last Holiday tries to hold on to its "message": live life to the fullest and don't be a prick to other people. The film's final rimshots, however - in a where-are-they-now montage, of course - seem to say otherwise. Even after the film's villains and comic reliefs have been "reformed," this montage posits them as simpering idiots who go on to lead inconsequential lives, or deaths, that are played for laughs. The real lesson learned is that it's not only all right to be a selfish prick, but it's necessary; if you don't go along with the program, you're an un-American pinko commie and deserve to be ridiculed or killed. Live life to the fullest or go to hell.
--
Film
4/5 Triangles
Last Holiday
Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton
Directed by Wayne Wang
Paramount Pictures
New Orleans resident Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah, who always deserves better) is your average movie character whose life is a pathetic attempt at foreshadowing: She has a crappy job at a retail store, an unrequited love (LL Cool J) and a book just chock full of unrealized dreams - literally. So, no surprises when a comical Indian doctor (Ranjit Chowdhry) diagnoses her with one of those fictional diseases that filmmakers use to avoid being called insensitive, and gives her three weeks before she hits the pine box.
This revelation gives Georgia the opportunity to finally live out her dreams, empty out her bank account and act the ignorant American in Prague. It's there that she discovers that furri'ners talk funny (A fancy hotel's name is pronounced "poop.") and that they actually have a way of life that is, shock of shocks, not exactly as it is in America. Sassing her way through bitchy clothiers and German lesbians, Georgia throws around money left and right in a last-ditch effort to live the good life. She gets to stick it to The Man, too, as she meets up with Matthew Kragen (Timothy Hutton, a poor man's Christopher McDonald), the big boss of the chain of stores for which Georgia works; through a series of "hilarious" misunderstandings, he and his Capitol Building cronies believe her to be an eccentric millionaire.
So beyond the thoroughly threadbare plot and uninteresting rich-people-do-this sequences, what else does Last Holiday have to offer? Why, it's our old friend hypocrisy. Sure, the film occasionally has class and race issues on its mind: Kragen asks an African-American senator from Louisiana (Giancarlo Esposito) to identify Georgia, only to get the (reasonable) response, "I don't know everyone who's black." But of course, this scene directly precedes a prelude back to America, where Dr. Comical Indian meditates while on his break. It's orchestrated to get a big laugh from the audience because, tee-hee, silly Indian man, that's not American! Oh, and there's the French chef (Gerard Depardieu, inviting a chorus of "What happened to you?") who is treated in the condescending manner of "one of the good ones," yet the film still manages to throw in a few jokes about how his accented English sounds unintelligible. Apparently it's all right to generalize some cultures, as long as you find the right ones to generalize.
Even after all of that, Last Holiday tries to hold on to its "message": live life to the fullest and don't be a prick to other people. The film's final rimshots, however - in a where-are-they-now montage, of course - seem to say otherwise. Even after the film's villains and comic reliefs have been "reformed," this montage posits them as simpering idiots who go on to lead inconsequential lives, or deaths, that are played for laughs. The real lesson learned is that it's not only all right to be a selfish prick, but it's necessary; if you don't go along with the program, you're an un-American pinko commie and deserve to be ridiculed or killed. Live life to the fullest or go to hell.
--
Film
4/5 Triangles
Last Holiday
Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton
Directed by Wayne Wang
Paramount Pictures
