The Holdovers (2023)

My Review

“The Holdovers” is a comedy-drama film that tells the story of an unpopular teacher at a New England prep school given the job of supervising a handful of students who have nowhere to go for the two weeks of the 1970 Christmas break. Director Alexander Payne (“About Schmidt” 2002) does an excellent job of story telling from a well written screenplay by David Hemingson. Payne inculcated the film with good production values, wonderful cinematography, and marvelous character development.

The three principals of the film delivered very substantial performances that uncovered layers of their personalities as the movie progressed. Paul Giamatti played the curmudgeon professor unpopular with students and staff alike, Dominic Sessa was the troubled student whose father just passed away, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph portrayed the college’s head cook whose son recently was killed in the Vietnam War. Co-stars include Carrie Preston, Gillian Vigman, Michael Provost, Brady Hepner, Colleen Clinton, Charles Melton, Ian Dolley, Jim Kaplan, Andrew Garman, Naheem Garcia, Stephen Thorne, Darby Lee-Stack, Bill Mootos, Dustin Tucker, Juanita Pearl, Alexander Cook, and Tate Donovan as Stanley Clotfelter.

The very watchable two hour-plus film “The Holdovers” has not done well at the box office for Miramax, Grand Via, and Focus Features.