What have we here? A holiday movie that doesn't make everyone grumpy? A romantic comedy with real sense of how romance feels, both good and bad, when caught in its throes? Such stars as Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Jack Black, who are funny, sexy, unabashedly wear emotions in plain view and can winningly play those quirky-ridiculous neuroses that light up movie screens? Pass the eggnog.

"The Holiday" goes down so smoothly that chef Nancy Meyers, the film's writer, director and co-producer, spent eons in the kitchen making everything look easy. But as the comic said on his deathbed: Dying is easy; comedy -- especially romantic comedy -- is hard.

At 131 minutes, this comedy runs a tad long, but the reward is deeper characterizations than most comedies enjoy. It's formulaic but with a big heart, so Columbia and Universal (domestic and foreign distributors, respectively) should savor plenty of Christmas cheer with this sophisticated adult holiday offering.

The movie pivots around a home exchange. Imagine two very unhappy women, both go-getters in work but disasters in personal relationships, who impulsively swap domiciles for the holidays over the Internet.
Amanda (Diaz) owns a top advertising firm that produces movie trailers in Los Angeles but has so little time for her semi-live-in boyfriend (Edward Burns) that she catches him cheating on her. Iris (Winslet), a reporter for London's Daily Telegraph, long ago caught her ex-boyfriend (Rufus Sewell) cheating on her -- with that girl in circulation on the 19th floor (strange how the specificity of that location puts her in her place). But she still carries a torch for him. One more thing: Iris cries too much; Amanda can't cry at all.

Iris gets the better bargain propertywise as Amanda's gorgeous, sleekly modern mansion contains all the electronic gadgetry that makes life so wonderful. Amanda gets a cozy country cottage that comes with an accessory never mentioned on its Web site: Iris' brother Graham (Law) is known to crawl back from the local pub a bit drunk and crash on the couch. An instantaneous affair blazes between these two like a flame that finds dry kindling.

Meanwhile, Iris makes friends with a neighbor, aging Hollywood screenwriter Arthur (Eli Wallach), who helps her out of her shell of low self-esteem and depression. During her adventures in Hollywoodland, which include blasts of December Santa Ana winds and a cheerful Chanukah party with Arthur and his cronies (Bill Macy and Shelley Berman), she encounters Miles the composer (Black). He's a surprisingly cool guy who wants to share his enthusiasm for movies and music with his actress-girlfriend (Miffy Englefield), yet she continually two-times him. It sounds oh-so-familiar to Iris.

Things take their course, but those courses aren't always predictable. Happy endings are, perhaps, expected, but Meyers arrives at them by routes often circuitous and unforeseen. Each detour provides deeper understandings of who these people are and how their pasts and hopes for the future often thwart happiness in their present lives.

The peripheral characters, especially the cheating mates, get short shift. But the main characters are intricately detailed with quirks, attitudes and mischief not unlike all the old classic comedies -- often with strong female figures -- the characters frequently refer to in their dialogue. Consequently, "Holiday" is a new old movie, expanding on classics caught late at night on cable TV and re-imagined in contemporary terms.

The film also reaps the benefits of a classy production team of cinematographer Dean Cundey and designer Jon Hutman that captures the essence of both the U.K. and West L.A.