Last Holiday (2006)
Everyone’s gotta splurge sometimes, especially around the holidays, and 2006’s Last Holiday is about a lady going for what she thinks is her ultimate splurge.
Georgia Byrd spends her life dreaming and is frugal to a fault. She pulls out coupons for Lean Cuisine at the grocery store and then goes home and cooks along to Emeril LeGasse, the products of which labors always look delectable, or at least that’s what her nephew tells her. Other than that, she works in the houswares department store giving gourmet cooking demonstrations and has a major crush on Sean, one of the managers.
Then Georgia gets an MRI and finds out she has three or four weeks to live, and after the initial shock wears off a little bit, she decides to quit her job, quit living in her dreams and spend her last days living it up. She books a trip to Hotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, where she buys a tony new wardrobe, takes full advantage of the hotel spa, orders the menu, makes friends with Chef Didier, and charms all the staff, including the sweeter-than-she-looks floor attendant Gunther.
And yes, “Pupp” is pronounced “poop,” which, thankfully, the movie only mentions in passing.
Everyone wonders who Georgia is and where she’s from, and some, like Matthew Kragen, who owns the department store chain Georgia used to work for, are threatened by her because they don’t know if she’s there to expose them for the snakes in the grass they are or not (Matthew even tries to one-up Georgia at base jumping but chickens out at the last minute while she elatedly floats to the ground). Georgia is remarkably patient and kind with these people even though she knows they’d throw her under the bus as soon as look at her.
Meanwhile, poor Sean is confused and worried when Georgia doesn’t come into work and decides to take matters into his own hands. So does one of the doctors who gave Georgia the bad news, which means Georgia may have a few surprises left before her time is up.
Now, the idea of a terminally ill person blowing their life savings on an extravagant hotel stay isn’t new. Last Holiday is a remake of a 1950 movie of the same title starring Alec Guinness, but the premise was used elsewhere even before that, such as the Otto Krigelein story arc in Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel.
This all makes for a fairly predictable movie on the line of, well, many rags-to-riches type movies already out there. There’s a makeover scene. There’s Georgia reacting to the strange world of spa treatments. There are nick-of-time meetings and mistaken impressions like any other comedy. We’ve seen it all before.
None of this matters, though, because Last Holiday is winningly enjoyable. It doesn’t have to get deep or twisty because it’s there to simply entertain, and its leading lady has an absolute ball in her role, particularly when she goes shopping and bops around the kitchen cooking up a storm with Chef Didier. Her scenes with LL Cool J are fun as well, even though we have to wait a little bit for that payoff.
The movie does fumble in a few places, of course. Georgia talks to God at random times like a female Tevye, which is commendable but confusing to her fellow travelers. If the movie had frozen the action at these points it would have been a lot easier to follow, but as it is it makes some of the comedy fall pretty flat. And it’s too bad Sean is out of the picture for most of the movie, although he redeems himself pretty impressively towards the end.
In all, Last Holiday is a lighter-than-air good time that left me smiling. It might not be perfect, but that’s OK.
Last Holiday is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Rated PG-13.
My grade: B+
Principal cast: Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Gerard Depardieu, Timothy Hutton, Giancarlo Esposito, Jane Adams, Susan Kellerman, Alicia Witt
Directed by Wayne Wang
Written by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman, J.B. Priestley (1950 version)