The Holdovers

One of the most striking things about The Holdovers from the beginning is how cozy it is. As the film opens, we poke our head into various parts of the school, treated to various vignettes as the students and faculty prepare for winter break. The buildings are old and ornate and impressive, a result of the events being set in 1970s New England (they never say exactly where, but they seem to imply Connecticut). A gentle score wafts about, and the ground outside is covered in a thin layer of snow. You can taste the approach of Christmas on the air. It’s the type of movie that makes you want to curl up in front of a roaring fire with a cup of hot cocoa.

That is, until it’s not.

The Holdovers is about students at a boarding school who stay there over the holiday under the care of a teacher. This year, that teacher is Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a bitter and exacting man who takes pleasure in nothing more than his books, especially classical texts. He certainly has little love for the students, viewing them as stone to be aggressively chiseled into shape, with little care for their personhood. That is, he’s a hard-ass. And he’s left in charge of four students for two weeks, with the only other person on campus being the school cook, Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Well, five students. Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), bags already packed, is informed on the last day of class that his mother won’t be picking him up because she really needs to go on a vacation with her new husband. And his feeling of isolation and abandonment deepens even further when a set of circumstances results in the other kids departing campus, leaving him all alone with an ornery middle-aged misanthrope.

That’s not entirely fair. It’s not that Hunham dislikes people, he just has no patience for most. The world has not been kind to him, and his response was to withdraw into his comfort zone, eventually landing on the faculty where he’d gone to secondary school. When he’d tried to make it on his own, the privileged and connected stepped all over him, so now he’s retreated, tail between his legs, to lord over those he perceives as underneath him.

This had all the makings of a solid, small film. Set at a school, inconsequential events, Paul Giamatti. But it doesn’t quite pull it off. A movie like this lives and dies on its character relations, and everyone is just too cruel to each other.

Tully and Teddy (Brady Hepner) are constantly at each other’s throats. While Teddy is undeniably a racist prick, a clear and awful product of his rich upbringing, Tully’s actions aren’t successfully positioned as righteous or endearing. They’re just two kids going at each other, through pranks and taunts and fighting. Hunham is incredibly unpleasant, and endlessly arrogant. He spends all his energy making sure his students know exactly how much he disdains them, and that’s no different over the winter break. He sets their schedules as if they’re still in class, complete with mandatory studying and exercise. To say nothing of how far out of his way he goes to use highfalutin language as much as possible. Mary is the primary exception, because although somewhat gruff, she actually demonstrates that she has a heart on numerous occasions, especially where the kids are concerned.

Even the movie’s ostensibly core dynamic of Tully and Hunham consists of two people who constantly antagonize each other. Yes, it’s clear that they’ve both been broken by circumstance, and Hunham sees himself in Tully to some degree, but there are little signs of thaw until it happens. While that turn is perfectly believable when it comes, it means that by the time we get there, I haven’t built much of a connection to either of them, nor am I invested in them discovering just how much they can gain from each other. It feels less like the culmination of a series of events and more like the next occurrence in the chain.

Which can honestly be said of a lot of what happens in this movie. Tully meeting Elise (Darby Lee-Stack) at Ms. Crane’s holiday party is a great example. The party itself serves a purpose, yes, but their chat reveals nothing to us about Tully, nor is it ever really relevant, except in the thinnest of ways. There are a handful of little side plots like that which don’t serve to either advance the story or sketch out the characters or world that much. The whole first half, maybe even two-thirds, of the story feel bloated, meandering in a way which doesn’t add a ton of value. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not nothing; it’s just drawn out. It takes an hour (give or take) to say what should only really take 30 or 40 minutes. For instance, I’m unsure why we spend so much time with the full cohort of the holdovers, when we really only care about Tully. Even the coziness has a hard time sustaining, as it’s broken up by what amounts to a power struggle.

But once we do turn that corner, and their relationship begins to truly develop, it’s a whole new ballgame. The movie becomes more dynamic, they feel a lot more free and relaxed, and the emotional beats begin to land. Some good characterizations find their way out around here, which add some real depth, and build off key moments from earlier. It’s too bad this comes so late, because it’s this vibe I would have enjoyed building to and living in for the bulk of the runtime. As such, it’s not quite enough to completely save the experience, but it does make the ending feel pretty satisfying.

No one’s setting the world on fire here with their performance, but Randolph is the closest. As the only character who’s living in their pain and not taking it out on everyone else, she has a bit more of a nuanced personality to pull off, and she does so beautifully. She’s warm, but often a bit detached, as her son only just died. She is without a question the heart of the film, and it’s a role she nails. Giamatti is fantastic as doing his sad sack thing (which I love), but he doesn’t really capture the pain underlying it until the context around him makes it clear it’s there. As for Sessa…listen, I’m not gonna hit the point too hard. Suffice it to say it’s his first on-screen acting role, and you can tell. Big choices, inelegant deliveries…eh.

For some, this will become a new Christmas classic. It’s got the themes of redemption and found family you want, the whole world looks the part (even as that becomes less and less the case in reality), and there’s even a small Christmas tree. For me, I came out of it wanting more, desiring the characters to be more well developed, or for them to execute the development that existed over a shorter amount of time. I needed it to be funnier, as sold by the trailer, which contained many of the biggest laughs (as happens way too often). I craved a world far more compelling than it was. So while I didn’t hate this (far from it!), it represents a lot of squandered potential.