Review: ‘The Holdovers’ is a Throwback in All the Best Ways

By Melanie Fischer | Film | November 30, 2023 |

By Melanie Fischer | Film | November 30, 2023 |

Nostalgia is the name of the game that has dominated Hollywood for more than a decade now. Everything old is new again, rebooted and sequel-ed and prequel-ed and spun off. But for all these throwback stories, recent cinematic storytelling (with some very welcome exceptions) can quite often, in comparison to these older works, feel somehow lesser than. Lacking.

Maybe it’s the CGI or the proliferation of nepo babies or Hollywood running itself into the ground trying to act like big tech. Some combination of all these things, or none of them entirely. Perhaps part of it is just a natural consequence of growing up and getting older—watching a film from decades past and feeling a pang of sadness to the tune of why don’t they make them like this any more.

The Holdovers, the new film from director Alexander Payne—that superstar of the ’00s and early ’10s indie scene who hasn’t released a film since the career pratfall that was 2017’s Downsizing—is a throwback in a very different kind of way. Instead of retelling or continuing a familiar tale, it’s an original story that feels like a product of a bygone era in a delightful way, with touches of modernity where it counts most.

The year is 1970. The place is Barton Academy, a fictional but on point amalgamation of every prestigious New England boarding school you’ve ever heard of before, full of poor little rich boys flush with generational wealth and daddy issues.

The protagonist is book smart but socially inept Classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), the sort of academic with minimal interest in life beyond his books or the world beyond the academy’s campus. He lives in his head and in the past, fully absorbed in not just bygone eras of human civilization, but of Barton, stubbornly committed to the beliefs of the academy’s founder—of the earnest pursuit of moral and academic excellence through unrelenting discipline. He hands out pop quizzes right before break and reading over Christmas. As one can imagine, he is universally reviled by the student body. The new headmaster, Dr. Woodrip (Andrew Garman), sees maintaining the prestige of Barton as a matter of dollars and cents, and Hunham, who refuses to revise a donor’s son’s failing grade, as a massive thorn in his side.

It’s under these circumstances that Hunham gets roped into being responsible for the holiday “holdovers”—that handful of students whose parents can’t come and collect them for the winter break. After a fortuitous turn of events gives most of these boys an opportunity for a much more exciting vacation, Hunham is left with just one holdover, singular, the clever but angrily rebellious Angus (newcomer Dominic Sessa in a breakout role). Rounding out this decidedly miserable bunch is Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Barton’s head cook, grieving her young son who was recently killed in Vietnam.

The film isn’t just set in 1970, but also feels like it could be a product of the 1970s in the best ways. The Holdovers is the kind of movie that leaves actors space to act and lets quiet moments be quiet; an unfortunate rarity in today’s Hollywood. Paul Giamatti is often the best part of whatever he’s in, but few and far between are the occasions where he has a role and a project of a caliber that enables him to show off the full magnitude of his talents. The role of Paul Hunham is one of those delightful rarities. He’s a fascinating character and one who, in less capable hands, could very easily go awry; Giamatti manages to portray a man who is at once deeply empathetic and largely insufferable.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph is similarly delightful as Mary, and Dominic Sessa manages to hold his own opposite these two powerhouses in his screen debut. Sessa’s performance does, at times, read a bit capital-A Acting in a way that feels a little less organic than his co-stars, but considering his most frequent scene partner is a career-best Giamatti, this feels more an inevitability than anything that could be fairly regarded as a fault.

For Payne, The Holdovers is a welcome return to form, with a twist. It’s a sharply observed and grounded character study that juggles comedy and drama with impressive dexterity; a highly specific world populated by distinctive, deeply flawed characters—all the hallmarks of the filmmaker’s oeuvre to date. But there’s a warmth here that feels new and different for Payne. Perhaps this quality is owed to screenwriter David Hemingson, whose most prominent credit to date otherwise is the short-lived ABC series Whiskey Cavalier. Whatever the cause may be, the result is very welcome, a film that depicts a cruel world with a kind lens. For Payne’s many strengths as a filmmaker, his earlier films tend to have a bitter aftertaste; a sharp sense of humor with a habit of punching down at characters already brought low. In The Holdovers, Payne has managed to maintain that same keen-eyed insight, but without the sense that the film itself is an active participant in the torment. It’s a rare and remarkable balance to hit; a tale with all the heart of Dead Poets Society but markedly more grounded, stripped of the more plasticky sheen of Hollywood polish.

The qualities that make The Holdovers great are the kind that hold up extremely well regardless of where or how you’re viewing it, but seeing a film like this, new in theaters, is such a pleasant rarity that it’s well worth catching on the big screen while you still can.

The Holdovers is now playing in theaters and available via PVOD.