'The Holdovers': A predictable letdown of a film – review

Alexander Payne’s latest movie, The Holdovers, which opens throughout Israel on February 8, is getting major Oscar buzz and it’s the kind of character-driven, low-key drama of redemption and friendship that could provide a nice contrast to the overblown, overhyped movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer that got most of the attention this year. 

If only it were better. 

It’s one of those wintry movies about misfits bonding during the Christmas season, and while it has characters you care about more as it goes along, it takes its time and it’s so clear that the bonding is on the way that you may grow impatient with the slow pacing. It’s disappointing because Payne has often made enjoyable, memorable movies, especially his early features, Election and Citizen Ruth. 

Why The Holdovers falls flat

Election brutally satirized a high-school student (Reese Witherspoon) determined to win a school election at all costs, while Citizen Ruth, featuring Laura Dern, subversively mined the politics of the political controversy around the abortion movement for comedy. Payne also made Sideways, the story of two middle-aged men who are disappointed with their lives and who take what they hope will be a cathartic journey through California wine country, which was a breakout role for Paul Giamatti, best known today for the TV series, Billions, who also stars in The Holdovers. 

In The Holdovers, Giamatti – considered one of the frontrunners for the Best Actor Oscar – plays Paul Hunham, a very strict teacher at a New England boys’ prep school in 1970 who is universally disliked and disrespected by the students, the other teachers, and his boss. He revels in giving his students – most of whom he considers lazy, overprivileged idiots – failing grades, even if they are wealthy or politically connected. No one would ever consider Paul overprivileged. He was a scholarship student, went to Harvard, and came back to teach at his old prep school – and rarely leaves the campus. He has no family, no friends, and no relationships with women. Oh, and due to a medical condition, he smells bad. Before you can think what a lovable loser he is, he gets stuck looking after “the holdovers” – the kids who can’t go home for the holidays – over the Christmas break. 

It goes without saying that he is an unrelenting jerk as he makes these sad students, who are missing their families (some live far away, some have parents who don’t want them around), spend their days studying and exercising, with no chance for any fun. It’s all about painting Paul – at the beginning – as what the late New Yorker critic Pauline Kael would have called “a parody of an anti-life monster,” a quote from her review of Terms of Endearment, in which she was describing Shirley MacLaine’s character, but which also applies here. 

Eventually, all the students get a reprieve and are able to leave, except for Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa, who should have gotten an Oscar nod but didn’t). He is Paul’s brightest student and though he originally seemed like one of the entitled egomaniacs Paul loathes, at the last minute, his mother tells him that she and his new stepfather are going to the Caribbean for a vacation without him. This punctures Angus’s brash façade and while he rebels against Paul’s rules, it’s clear that he is acting out due to his feelings of abandonment. 

There is a third character who is stuck at the school with them, Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who is virtually guaranteed an Oscar for this performance), the school cook who is mourning the recent loss of her only son in Vietnam. She is wise and noble throughout, with moments of heartbreaking vulnerability. Randolph, who has appeared in The Idol and Only Murders in the Building, plays this role so well you will only realize how cliched the character is after you leave the theater. Despite her pain, she manages to push Paul and Angus closer together, making them realize what is truly important in life. 

Eventually, the long-foreshadowed bonding comes as the teacher and student reveal their secrets and admit who they really are, in a series of scenes that do become progressively more touching. Mary finds some comfort in her connection to the two of them and they all embrace the redemption that was hovering on the horizon from the movie’s opening moments. 

The three leads work well together and you will root for them, although there is a predictability and heavy-handedness to the story that makes it less moving than it would otherwise be. There are some good actors in supporting roles who don’t have much to do, among them Carrie Preston of The Good Wife who plays a down-to-earth faculty member who moonlights as a waitress. The ’70s setting is used cleverly and the opening credits make it look like a film that was actually made 50-plus years ago, which is a fun way to start it off. 

But for all its virtues, The Holdovers invites unfortunate comparisons to the ne plus ultra of teacher-student bonding movies, Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire, based on and very faithful to the great novel by Michael Chabon of the same title. While I really wanted to like The Holdovers and I did enjoy quite a bit of it, it was hard to banish memories from the much funnier and more moving Wonder Boys as The Holdovers limped along.