The 7 Plot Holes That Ruin The Holiday and Make It FAKE
JUDE Law left The Holiday fans stunned and heartbroken with his shocking revelation about the much-loved Christmas film this week.
Grimacing as he realized he was about to destroy viewers’ hopes and dreams, Jude admitted during an interview on BBC Radio 2 that the quaint English cottage that Kate Winslet owns in the film didn’t actually exist.
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Instead, they used a set – with the outside set up in a ‘field’ somewhere and the inside recorded in a studio in Los Angeles.
However, Jude’s revelation comes as viewers have noticed a slew of other discrepancies in the 2006 film that are only now coming to light.
Snow gone!
The exterior of Iris’s (played by Kate Winslet) house wasn’t the only thing that was fake.
In the film, Cameron Diaz’s character Amanda does an impromptu home exchange with Iris, temporarily moving into the fairytale cottage.
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Numerous scenes show the home covered in a blanket of snow.
However, Cameron told Vulture that it was all fake.
“We covered the entire hill with this fake snow, which was completely biodegradable,” she said.
“It was the most incredible thing: it doesn’t snow in England.
‘It’s raining in England. But there are patches of snow.’
Funnily enough, there were actually three snowfalls during the filming of the movie in England.
However, it was never enough to create the blanket of snow that director Nancy Meyers was looking for.
Very hard work
One of the most famous scenes for Cameron’s Amanda is when she leaves the cottage to go to the airport, before realizing she’s making a big mistake.
She then stops the car, tells the driver she’s gone and sprints back to her love interest: Jude’s Graham.
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The scene where Cameron looked glamorous in a designer ensemble lasted just seconds on the big screen.
But she admitted it took much longer to actually shoot.
“I was running about seven miles a day in heels,” she added to Vulture.
The highest grossing Christmas films of all time in Britain
1. The Grinch (2018) – £424,000,000
2. Home Alone (1990) – £376,000,000
3. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) – £283,000,000
4. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (2000) – £273,000,000
5. A Christmas Carol (2009) – £256,000,000
6. The Polar Express (2004) – £250,000,000
7. Eleven (2003) – £180,000,000
8. The Holiday (2006) – £162,000,000
9. Santa Claus (1994) – £150,000,000
10. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) – £137,000,000
Figures accurate as of November 2024
“That whole scene took a week to shoot. That wasn’t even in the script!
“They only used two shots, but we took like 10 shots from me running around 10 different fields.
“And I’m wearing that Valentino cashmere, wool trench coat, a cashmere turtleneck sweater and jeans, and my high-heeled boots.”
Out of her league
Another plot hole viewers have noticed is that Iris would never have been able to afford the cottage in Surrey with her journalist salary.
The cottage that inspired Nancy to build her replica recently sold for a whopping £675,000.
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And considering that in real life Iris would have earned around £24,000 a year, there’s no way she would have had enough to afford a chocolate box to take home.
On top of that, she would have had to commute from Surrey to London every day – a journey that could easily have cost her thousands of pounds and hours a year.
Fast handling
The speed with which Iris and Amanda arrange their home exchange is another controversial point in the film.
Given that they both had full-time jobs – Iris as a journalist and Amanda as a movie trailer editor – it is unlikely that they would have been able to get permission for their holiday, book flights and pack their bags in the 24 hour it was said to be in the United States. film.
They also took a huge gamble, as neither did any research into the other’s house.
But since it was a romantic comedy, their gamble paid off.
When Amanda was thrilled to arrive at the Rosehill cottage, Iris was more than impressed with the luxurious additions in the Los Angeles mansion she temporarily called home.
Phone home
While it is much more common today for young children to have cell phones, this was not the case in 2006.
So the idea that Jude’s daughters, Graham, who would be aged five and seven, had their own mobile phone was somewhat implausible.
The phones also formed a major plot point, as the girls continued to call their father, leading Amanda to suspect that Graham was cheating on her.
However, she eventually discovered the truth, after which his daughters’ phones were nowhere to be seen.
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Time is up
Others pointed out that the film’s timeline is almost entirely inaccurate.
Early in the film, Iris’s newspaper boss gives a hint as to the date, as he says it is the week before Christmas.
And according to Cosmopolitan’s estimates, the newspaper office would close as close to Christmas as possible, around December 22.
This means that Iris and Amanda would have gone on holiday on December 23.
However, it is not mentioned that it is Christmas Eve or Christmas Day for some of the key events in the film, such as Amanda going on a date with Graham.
Viewers also wondered where Graham’s two children were while he was away with Amanda.
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Sore point
But perhaps the most devastating plot hole of all is Jude’s revelation that the Rosehill cottage “doesn’t exist”.
“So the director, she’s a bit of a perfectionist, toured the whole area and didn’t quite find the chocolate house she was looking for,” he explained in the Radio 2 interview.
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“So she just rented a field, drew it and had someone build it.
“But here’s the funny thing, when you look at it. So we were shooting here in the winter.
“And every time I walk through that door, we cut and shoot the interiors in LA, about three months later.”
Comedian Kerry Godliman, who was also interviewed on the show, was shocked and shouted: “No, please stop!”
While host Zoe was equally distraught, adding: “We don’t want to hear it anymore. We cannot bear it.”
Looking a bit sheepish, Jude then said, “Burst the bubble, sorry!”
