Alexander Payne has never really been one of my favorite directors. I never thought I’d understand the praise they heap on him for films like Nebraska or The Descendants, movies that get more overrated to me as time goes on. Then you see a movie like The Holdovers, and the Payne love makes more sense. Fuzzy in all the right ways, Payne channels the 1970s classics he clearly loves to make a 1970s classic of his own, in 2023.
Welcome to Barton Academy in 1970, a prestigious boarding school in the Northeast US. There teaches Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a Barton lifer who basically went from student to teacher, making lives hell for the rich kids at the school by cruelly grading the entitled brats. With no family and no life outside of the school, Paul decides to babysit the holdovers: unlucky kids whose parents leave them at Barton over the Christmas/New Years winter break. The unluckiest one of them all is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whose mom (Gillian Vigman) is so enamored with her new husband (Tate Donovan) that she can’t even pick up the phone on her honeymoon, leaving Angus by himself with Mr. Hunham and the Barton cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).
The Holdovers feels like a movie I’ve watched for years. It feels timeless because of Alexander Payne’s direction and David Hemingson’s wonderful script. We combine a Christmas movie with a teacher/student comedy, with the older curmudgeon pissed off at the wild rebel child with snow everywhere. Mr. Hunham, Angus, and Mary all are mixtures of ubiquity and specificity. Each of them uses humor and crass dialogue to cover up the fact that they’re emotionally lonely and fragile. And yet, all 3 do that in completely different ways. Paul resorts to turning every conversation into something about the Peloponnesian War, or some other historical fact. Angus chooses to be a giant fly in the ointment just because. And poor Mary resorts to a drink or watching The Newlywed Game on TV. The prickly nature of the three characters makes the dialogue and jokes come early and often, and are so character specific that The Holdovers will hold up better than most other comedies like it because they aren’t reliant on cultural specificity for their punchlines, just the window dressing.
The Alexander Payne movie I’ve enjoyed the most was Sideways, in no small part thanks to Paul Giamatti’s presence. There was a time children, before T Mobile Einstein Commercials and Spider Man 2 Rhino behavior that Giamatti was one of our best working actors. In The Holdovers Giamatti gets a chance to shine again. Channeling a 1970s older Miles Raymond, Giamatti plays Paul Hunham as a man content in his little Barton sphere, untrusting of the world outside of it. As booksmart as Paul is, Giamatti mines wonderful comedy through how equally stupid Paul is emotionally. His tete a tete with Dominic Sessa’s Angus is nonstop joy, as Giamatti spits out old aphorisms that fall on Angus’s confused ears. I mean, how would you respond to “Do NOT cross the Rubicon”? Sessa mostly holds his own against the incredible Giamatti, channeling barely suppressed rage with no way to back it up, but like a 1970s kid. But the movie really works because of Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Mary Lamb (nice, Alexander) is the movie’s beating broken heart; despite her sadness Mary has time to listen to all these self-absorbed people and help make them fell better or provide just the right advice, whether it be a quippy comeback or a sweet smile.
Sometimes it’s so simple right? If you have a great cast who can deliver a great script, you’re golden. And that’s The Holdovers in a nutshell. I personally cherish little gems like this, because if I don’t, that means we’re getting Paul Giamatti doing a Sigmund Freud accent in a Better Help Podcast Ad instead.