The Holiday I've mentioned Laurie Hutzler's brilliant 'Emotional Toolbox' newsletter before and there's something in her February newsletter that really struck me and I thought I should share.

After films about time travel, I'd have to say my next big genre guilty pleasure is a good romcom (there, I've said it). But I don't mean those sloppy, girly romcoms, right. I'm talking about tough-talking verbally venemous screwballs. So I've watched an awful lot of them, including some woeful ones, and I've even enjoyed some of the crap ones (hey, you can learn a lot from watching crap films).

But one film I didn't bother seeing over Xmas was The Holiday. Now, on the face of it, it had a couple of ingredients that might make me slope off quietly for an afternoon and sneak into a multiplex wearing my hat, scarf and shades ensemble: namely it's a romcom and Kate Winslet's in it.

But no. I suffered the trailer enough times to make me avoid this one like Van Helsing 2 (should such an abomination ever be visited upon mankind). And it wasn't until I read Laurie Hutzler's February newsletter that I realised why.

She analyses why this particular film failed to deliver on the basic audience expectations for its genre. A failure that is so blatant that it shines through even in the trailer.

I'll leave you to check it out for yourself, but one of the key points really struck a chord with me:

"Romantic comedies work best when there is a strong personal impediment posed by a relationship with an appropriate mate. An appropriate mate is a person who, for a variety of external reasons, SHOULD be a perfect match but isn't... In The Holiday neither Diaz nor Winslet has an appropriate mate who exerts any kind of obstacle to the soul mate. Diaz and Winslet have both broken with their boyfriends. Law's wife is dead and Black isn't involved with anyone."

So that's what I was detecting unconsciously in the trailers. There was nothing at stake for these characters. No risk, no flouting of convention, no actual conflict. Just two nice, harmless couples inevitably getting together... in a winter wonderland. So desperately inoffensive, in fact, that it's... well, offensive.

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