I’m starting to realise that January is always a blunder ☹ There’re countless award-contending movies I want to watch, but the weather is good, and the Australian Open tennis championships make for tantalizing TV, basically taking place in my own backyard – so I can never get everything done as quickly as I would like. As The Holdovers has been put off and put off, my expectations for this movie have grown, as I’m really looking forward to seeing it. Paul Giamatti is challenging my current favourites at the award ceremonies for best actor, and I know the man can do it, a solid contributor of the form over an extensive career, so I really need to see what he’s doing here – maybe I’ll forget that the names Cillian Murphy and Colman Domingo ever graced my screen 😏😂
Cranky, officious, boarding school history teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is tasked with taking care of the holdovers; the boys, who for various reasons, won’t be returning home for the Christmas break. Among them is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), who recently challenged Mr. Hunham when he gave most of the class poor grades and offered a make-up exam, only if the class studied a new chapter over the holidays, much to everyone’s chagrin. Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is the school’s head cook, and will prepare the group’s meals during this period, partly as a distraction since her own son passed away abroad this year, and this will be the first Christmas without him 😢 There are five boys in Paul’s care, but when one of the boy’s fathers’ reneges on a skiing trip, he takes three of the other boys with him, leaving only Mr. Hunham, Andy, and Mary, in a big empty school, where they’ll fight to put aside their differences.
It took me about 40 minutes to figure this movie out. What is this movie? I thought, at the scene where young Alex (Ian Dolley) throws his second glove in the river, that The Holdovers might be some allegorical exercise like Apocalypse Now. Then, as Angus does a cartwheel running away from his teacher, I supposed it some sort’ve Ferris Bueller’s Day Off rip-off. That’s how lost I was, going to those extremes 🥴 I didn’t latch onto any of these characters straight away, except for Mary, who is always engaging. But I waited it out, and from the time Angus dislocates his arm, The Holdovers finds some momentum, and develops into a first-class drama concerning unlikely friends. What follows the hospital, is watching the threesome interact with some romantic interests, and an impromptu ‘field trip’; shading and nuance come into the characters, and make for some intriguing transformations in Angus and Paul. Through Alexander Payne’s direction, the movie’s scenery is always beautiful – from the falling snow to the internals of the school, and then Boston. I want to visit all these places. But I can’t, since time-travel to 1970 doesn’t yet exist, so this movie will have to do. Movies have an obsession these days, I reckon, with looking like they’re from a different period too, and this movie appears as if it’s a ‘70s production through and through – from the watermarks, to the filmic glints and sun exposure (one day, I’ll learnt the technical terms for movie production, I swear). By the end, The Holdovers is a nice movie; pleasant to watch, and it’s not a stretch to say The Holdovers is lovely.
Atop of the slow lead-in, I do have another complaint to make about The Holdovers though, and that concerns the character of Angus. No shade on actor Dominic Sessa for his performance, but at his casting, because I couldn’t get a peg on his age, and throughout the entire movie, he appears to be too old to me. I couldn’t shake a comparison to Ben Schwartz from Parks & Recreation, for just his look. And if I think of the kids in Saltburn, who were in college, these kids have to be of high school age, but they talk and act more maturely by a mile – which, maybe they are, but one portrayal of rich brats that know nothing more than what they know, felt sharp and realistic to me, and one didn’t 🤷♂️ I never got that Angus was unliked by the other students either. I mean, I know they were perturbed by the make-up test incident, but I thought the movie’s focus was on Kountze (Brady Hepner) as the dickhead. So, I’d say Angus doesn’t really have an established character before the holdover begins, and as we learn that there’s more to him than meets the eye, I really had nothing ‘meeting my eye’ in the first place. The fact that he’s been kicked out of other schools doesn’t come up naturally or minimally either, before it’s needed for ripe emotional stakes later on. I’m right, aren’t I? Or did I fall asleep intermittently and miss some key scenes…
And the unfair thing about Paul Giamatti is that he will always have Sideways to live up to. It’s a travesty that he wasn’t nominated for an Academy Award back in 2005 for that brilliant performance – and, at a glance, Johnny Depp can come out of the category for Finding Neverland, surely. Giamatti does produce another fine character here, and I even started to wonder if Giamatti genuinely had a lazy eye that I’d never noticed before, extremely grateful that the movie ends up addressing it, so I now know it’s all part of the movie 😊 It also wouldn’t surprise me to discover that the lazy-eye prosthetic was switching sides between scenes, so we felt as lost as Angus as to which eye to look at as well. But does Giamatti forego the two names I mentioned above for this year’s Best Actor? I don’t think there’s a gold trophy in it for him unfortunately, but a Slice Award might be on the cards, which may be a more desirable outcome these days anyway 😮🤣 I’ll tell you who isn’t a shock to see among the award season’s best, and that’s Da’Vine Joy Randolph – her performance is unique and exquisite. How would I describe Mary…? A heartbroken gentle spirit, and intuitive boss of her domain. She’s even fun just watching Paul and Angus quibble, aiming to outwit, and completely misunderstand each other 😄 Bravo!
It seems Alexander Payne is a director that sneaks up on me. Just looking at his eight-film filmography, it turns out there’s only two I haven’t seen, and it’s hard to say where The Holdovers sits within the pack, because the majority of his works have been very good. Sideways, Election – difficult to say which would be my favourite, although I should rewatch The Descendants and About Schmit for a fresh-up. This is the first movie Payne has directed in six years, and I’m glad to have him back after the muddled ambition of Downsizing.
And this now makes five movies into the new year for me, and I’d come across three bangers by this time already last year. I thought The Holdovers was to be my best bet to be blown away after Poor Things, but I suppose last year was just one out of the box. Nonetheless, The Holdovers is extremely decent, but I can’t call it exemplary. For those who adore this movie, perhaps consider me a hard taskmaster like Mr. Hunham in ancient civ 😕
4.0
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