What Queen Latifah has going for her is an outsized, likable personality. Beware of any movie that wants her to pretend to be something else.

For example, beware of "Last Holiday." Here she plays a quiet, timid Louisiana woman who lives a solitary life of little importance. When this woman, Georgia Byrd, learns she has three weeks to live, she moves to a luxury hotel in Europe to spend her final days doing all the fun things she only dreamed about before. There she touches the hearts of the hotel staff and wins over all who encounter her with her down-home wisdom and aw-shucks humility.

Ugh. Ugh, I say. Latifah simply is not believable as a shy, mousy creature. It's too fundamentally opposite of who she is. It's like asking Yao Ming to play a dwarf. And the hotel staff falling in love with her? I can buy that if it's Queen Latifah they adore, but not Georgia Byrd. Georgia is drab and ordinary. (It was Alec Guinness in the 1950 film on which this one is based; he was certainly better suited to such a role.)

The Grandhotel Pupp in Prague is Georgia's destination, and it turns out to be a "Fantasy Island" retreat for her. Guess who runs the kitchen? Her favorite celebrity chef (played by Gerard Depardieu). Guess who's staying at the hotel at the same time? Her Louisiana congressman (Giancarlo Esposito) and the heartless businessman, Kragen (Timothy Hutton), who owns the department store Georgia works at.

Because she's at the Pupp, everyone assumes Georgia is a millionaire. (Indeed, one does wonder how a New Orleans salesclerk managed to save the $100,000 or so necessary to pull off this multi-week vacation.) So they cater to her every whim, while being charmed by her down-to-earth sensibilities. "She's the most amazing person who ever came to this hotel!" gushes one employee in some of the straight-faced hyperbole at which the film excels.

One employee, a prickly German valet named Gunther (Susan Kellerman), is not impressed, however. She searches Georgia's room for clues about her identity, and when she discovers who she really is, she says -- out loud, though there is no one else in the room -- "I wonder if your new friends would be so impressed if they knew the truth!" That's the dialogue, folks. Read it and weep.

The screenplay, by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman (the duo behind "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Wild Wild West"), is simple-minded and amateurish, reducing the story to one easy-to-remember maxim: Everything Georgia does is right; everyone who opposes her is evil. Following this thesis to its logical conclusion leads the film to some surprisingly stupid scenarios, as when Georgia, a novice skier, makes it down a mountain unscathed while Kragen, an expert, falls down constantly. Why does he fall? Because he doesn't like Georgia, and therefore must be punished. The movie wants you to applaud wildly to see Georgia's oppressor so humiliated.

By the end, when Georgia is winning at roulette -- (Why does she always win? Because everything Georgia does is right, remember?) -- and her secret crush (LL Cool J) is flying to Prague to profess his love for her, and Georgia is talking a suicide jumper down off a ledge -- that's when the movie completely falls apart. It doesn't make any sense, you see, any of it. Director Wayne Wang is powerless to stop it, although given his recent track record of treacly, senseless comedies like "Maid in Manhattan" and "Because of Winn-Dixie," I'm not even sure he wants to.


THE DVD

Audio is available in 5.1 Surround or 2.0 Surround, and in French 2.0. Subtitles are available in English or Spanish.

VIDEO: Widescreen (2.35:1) anamorphic and not a bad-looking movie, actually. The transfer is pristine, and the Czech scenery (including the opulent Grandhotel Pupp) looks splendid. There is very little noticeable edge enhancement.

AUDIO: Yep, the film gets strong marks in the technical areas. Both the 5.1 and 2.0 mixes sound fantastic, all the elements balanced nicely. Not that it's a "sound-heavy" movie, but what there is registers well.

EXTRAS: There's no director's commentary, so if you wanted to hear Wayne Wang wax philosophical about the intricacies of the story, you'll have to make do with the featurettes.

"Packing Light" (15:25) has the actors speaking hilariously about how complicated and deep their characters are, even though if you watch the film, you can see they're not.

LL Cool J very helpfully explains what the hard part about making a movie is: You film a couple scenes one day, then go away for a week, and when you come back, you have to somehow get back into character again! Even though you've been off work for a week!!

Apart from that nonsense, Wang and various producers talk about how the film came to be made, which truly is not very interesting.

In "Last Look" (7:46), the cinematographer and production designer discuss the "look" of the film. Fairly interesting if you're into that sort of thing.

Though it doesn't realize it, "23 Years in the Making" (7:23) explains perfectly why this movie sucks, and why movies in general often suck. Two guys wrote an updated version of Alec Guinness' "Last Holiday" (1950) in the mid-'80s but couldn't get anyone to make it. Then John Candy got attached, they rewrote it for him specifically, and the project never took off. Then, years later, someone suggested Queen Latifah -- and somehow, changing the main character from a man to a woman all of a sudden made the script BRILLIANT! NOW we should make this movie! Writing by committee, having little vision to begin with and then compromising what little vision you have, letting studio suits make creative decisions -- that's how to make a generic movie like this one.

There are two rightfully deleted scenes, the film's theatrical trailer and two Wolfgang Puck recipes that you can make yourself and be just like Georgia Byrd!


IN SUMMARY

You've seen this movie before a hundred times, and as charismatic as Queen Latifah is, she can't save this thing. For fans of the film, however, the DVD presentation is adequate (though a director's commentary should be obligatory nowadays). For everyone else, skip it.

(Note: Most of the "movie review" portion of this article comes from the review I wrote when the movie was released theatrically. I have re-watched the film in the course of reviewing the DVD, however.)