Nancy Meyers' The Holiday isn't much of one. A holiday, that is, though the writer/director has labored to concoct a festive romantic-comedy to take its place in that seasonal classics lineup that includes The Bishop's Wife (the original Grant-Young-Niven version, needless to say) and It's a Wonderful Life. Though Meyers' effort has the good fortune to have trapped a few good actors in its frames, there isn't much more that one can celebrate.

In harsher, less-PC times, this actresses' vehicle would have been summarily dismissed as a "woman's picture," a melodramatic "weepie," as they were once dubbed in the trades, leavened with a bit of wistful, sentimental humor. But Meyers was obviously aiming higher. Throughout The Holiday she references great films with strong women protagonists, such as Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth or Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. Meyers even attempts to reimagine the opening scene of The Philadelphia Story, in which Katharine Hepburn shows husband Cary Grant the door. But, as with so much in Meyers' work, her stab at it is heavy-handed, plus Cameron Diaz and Edward Burns could ever only be a bus-and-truck version of their betters.

The plot is a "trading places" tale, in which two women, Iris (Kate Winslet) and Amanda (Diaz), swap homes for Christmas. Though Iris is a bookish Englishwoman (who lives in a Laura Ashley-appointed cottage in a Surrey that no one has seen for some centuries) and Amanda is a high-powered Hollywood producer of trailers (living, naturally, in a palatial spread with all mod. cons. off Sunset Boulevard), they manage, for over two hours, to discover more about themselves in the other's shoes.

The primary discovery, you'll be shocked to learn, is love. In the case of Amanda, she is swept off her feet by Iris' dashing brother, Graham (Jude Law). Iris, having fled a masochistic relationship with one Jasper (Rufus Sewell), has a harder time of finding a suitable match, though the one Meyers finally matches her with hardly seems suitable.

Though the Diaz story gets the lion's share of screen time, it's Winslet's segments that are the more interesting. This is primarily due to Winslet being the stronger actor (Diaz should henceforth be barred from comedy), but it also hinges on Iris' interesting relationship with a nonagenarian screenwriter, Arthur Abbott (the wonderfully spry Eli Wallach), whom Iris adopts. It is Arthur who educates Iris into becoming the "leading lady of her own life" through exposing her to the luminous Stanwyck, Russell, et al.

Arthur, especially as played by Wallach, is such an attractive figure, and Iris is obviously both charmed and devoted to him, that one begins hoping that Meyers will defy ludicrous age restrictions and have Iris and Arthur fall in love. Unfortunately, Meyers pushes Iris in the path of a rather loutish film composer, Miles (Jack Black). While it is a struggle to accept Jude Law's character falling for a loquacious Hollywood blonde given to neurotic esophageal spasms, it is far more incomprehensible that the fragile, intelligent Iris would hook-up with someone who acts like they still live in their parents' basement and are given to utterances like "boob graze."

This is the greatest hindrance to The Holiday — the sheer unlikeliness of the pairings, compounded with the predictability of Meyers' script: Amanda hasn't been able to cry since her parents' divorce when she was 15. Will her love for Graham break this lachrymal dam?

Law and Winslet are excellent, of course, though there are times when you sense that the thoughtful Winslet is forcing herself to make the best of a mediocre assignment (it must on some level be galling that the last time she played an Iris it was as Iris Murdoch). Diaz screeches and flaps, Black is slack, and Edward Burns continues on as Hollywood's butchest falsetto.