Last Holiday
A long plane trip last week gave me the chance to sample the recent cinematic masterpiece, "Last Holiday", starring Queen Latifah. In brief: hard-working cookware saleswoman Georgia Byrd (Latifah) leads a life of unfulfilled possibilities. Passionate about cooking, she painstakingly recreates the dishes on Emeril’s TV show but lets herself eat only Lean Cuisine dinners. In her spare time, she pastes magazine clippings into her "Book of Possibilities"– photos of the refined French Chef Didier, luxurious European hotels, and wedding pictures with her face glued on the bride and an attractive co-worker’s on the groom.
Then everything changes. An MRI scan shows that she has a rare form of viral-induced brain cancer and has only three weeks to live. Suddenly, Georgia sees her life of delayed gratification for the folly it was and decides to blow her entire savings before dying. Living life to the fullest, she stays in a $3000/night hotel suite in the remote, snow-covered European hotel of her dreams, gets hot-rock massages all day, and eats ALL of the dishes on Chef Didier’s menu by night. After an all-out clothes-shopping spree, she trades in her saleswoman’s suits for the wardrobe of a rich woman, bungee jumps off a dam, and much more. Along the way, she charms the hotel staff by standing up for the rights of working people everywhere against the rich snobs who tend to stay in luxury hotels, charms the rich snobs themselves by coming off as richer than they are, wins $100,000 at a casino, and team cooks a New Year’s feast with Didier, her new best friend.
Now, I will say one good thing about this movie. Queen Latifah’s character comes across as genuinely likeable. As she catapults to fame and fortune, she remains very good-natured and goes out of her way to help everyone around her. But come on. Really this movie is an all-out endorsement of money. It’s a simple formula: saving money = unfulfilled possibilities, terrible mistake. Spending money = living life to the fullest, right decision, wins friends and influences people, leads to true love.
Another very odd thing about this movie is that in the face of imminent death, Georgia (as I said, a kind, generous, and spirited woman) has absolutely no one she feels like hanging out with (no friends, no family), except for the crush/co-worker who she has barely ever talked to and has never even gone on a date with, but very luckily and coincidentally wants to marry her. Lucky her. Rent it tonight and see how it all turns out.
