This film could be classified as a chick-flick because it’s based upon the romantic lives of two contemporary women, one American (Amanda – a wholly American looking Cameron Diaz) and one British (Iris – a dark-haired and considerably slimmed down Kate Winslet). Amanda is the very rich Hollywood based movie-trailer producer with her very own swank Hollywood mansion, while Iris is a comparitively mormal newspaper writer. Amanda needs to get away post a breakup with her unfaithful boyfriend – who’m she promptly kicks out of her mansion. Iris needs a break from her toxic relationship with a co-worker who is marrying someone else but needs Iris on-the-side. Thus Iris gets treated like yesterday’s left-overs by the cad but yet has not the strength to break away from him.

Nirvana seems to be in sight when Amanda spies Iris’s beautiful country cottage on a home-exchange program on the Internet, and the women agree to swap homes for the next 2 weeks. So, Iris comes to LA and Amanda’s reaches snowy Surrey, and we are left to find out whether either of the women find what they are looking for. Not that that’s ever in doubt – chick-flick remember ?

I’d expected a romantic tale and I got two. Only they were a bit too sappy and had too many “theatrical” dialogues to sound real. There are sweet spots I admit, but for the most part, I could predict where the sugar sweetness would begin to spill out in the form of a background song. Yes we know there will be happy endings, but would it hurt to surprise us once in a while ? The film moved pretty snappily in the beginning but really dragged around the middle. Could have been a lot shorter than it’s tedious 135 minutes.

Diaz and Jude Law make a good pair. Cameron and Kate both act beautifully, with Winslet really playing her way into our sympathetic hearts. And while I do think Winslet a bit horsy-faced for a mainstream Hollywood heroine, what gets me truly indignant is Jack Black paired opposite her. I mean Jack Black ? Of all the handsome men in Hollywood, Nancy Meyers puts in Jack Black as one of the romantic leads in a chick-flick ? Do you want to attract the female demographic or do you want to drive them away ? I am dumb-founded.

The story-line treads a safe and predictable path, and while Amanda’s love-tale seems to fit right in, Iris’s arrangement with Miles seems more contrived – I wouldn’t have thought it strong enough to make it into this kind of a “romantic” film. The movie itself is fairly average with not-so-sharp editing and a penchant for making movie moments which don’t happen. Still it’s considerably shored up by Kate’s charm and Cameron’s infectious energy, and if you watch it it’ll have to be for these two.