REVIEW:
They’ve done it again! Paul Giamatti and writer-director Alexander Payne. This is the duo behind Sideways, one of the best movie of the past few decades. And while the Holdovers isn’t quite on that level (few movies are,) it is definitely a smart, funny, and entertaining film. A lot of that credit goes to Giamatti himself, who is such a likable actor that even when he’s playing a jerk, you still want to spend time around him. Such is the case here, in a movie where he is playing a teacher at a prestigious school for young men, where he believes it is his job not only to teach them, but also to develop their character. And in this area, he has a hard time with most of his students.
The premise has Giamatti’s character, Paul Hunham, assigned to stay on campus and watch over any students who are not going home for the Winter Vacation. At first, that’s a handful of boys, but then after an unexpected situation comes to their school, only one boy is left. And so it’s Hunham, and this boy, Angus Tully, along with the cafeteria lady, Mary Lamb. She wants to stay on campus for the two weeks as well, since this was the last place she was with her son, before he died. The movie has these character spend time both at the school and also away from the school, going to a restaurant and party, and even a field trip to Boston. The different situations they find themselves in are fun. And there’s smart writing here, especially in terms of the Dunham character, who didn’t quite succeed in life as much as he would have liked.
There are definitely echoes of Giamatti’s Sideways character here, (both characters are writers, or at least long to be, with varying degrees of success, both are single, and both are trying to branch out and find themselves.) The movie is cold and a bit slow at times (it is intentionally made to look like a movie from the seventies, not just in terms of time period, but in terms of how it was actually filmed, to look like it was filmed during that time.) And it works because of a combination of three things… the compelling characters, the clever writing, and the likable, talented actors who are really hitting it out of the park.