he Holiday - written and directed by Hollywood's queen of the chick flick Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give, Baby Boom) - is essentially two love stories bundled into one tidy package. Your basic cookie-cutter chick flick, albeit one that doesn't feel cloyingly sweet.

Although the premise is simple, it takes forever to get going. Kate Winslet is a wedding reporter at a London newspaper, tearfully recovering from the break-up with her columnist boyfriend (Rufus Sewell). Meanwhile, Amanda (Cameron Diaz) is a Los Angeles film advertising exec who runs her own movie-trailer-editing company. She too has just endured a nasty break-up with her cheating boyfriend (Ed Burns).

To get out of the romantic funks with their bad boys, they trading houses for the holidays via an Internet home-swapping site. So off they go, swapping places without realizing how much will change in a short period of time. Amanda packs up her sweaters and satin sleep masks and jets to Iris' Rosehill cottage in Surrey. Iris, meanwhile, dries her tears and packs her sunscreen and tweeds and treks to Amanda's high-tech mansion on Sunset Boulevard, complete with 60-inch flat-screen TV and swimming pool.

Iris's quaint country home seems the ideal distraction for Amanda, and Amanda's lush Hollywood mansion looks to be the perfect getaway for Iris. And they each, to no one's surprise, meet a man. Amanda is at first disappointed with the secluded English countryside - until she meets Iris's handsome brother Graham (Jude Law) who encourages her to break down her rigid barriers.