‘The Holdovers’ Review: Alexander Payne Reunites With Paul Giamatti in What Feels Like a Lost ’70s Classic

Weve all seen our share of stories about inspirational teachers. The Holdovers is dedicated to the opposite sort: a hard-ass named Paul Hunham whom everyone hates. The feeling is mutual, as Mr. Hunham considers most of the kids enrolled at Barton Academy to be entitled little monsters, and the administration to be even more corrupt. Judging by the evidence director Alexander Payne provides, Mr. Hunhams not wrong. But he is uncharitable, and in that respect, the movie couldnt be more different: Its a generous drama about three wounded souls stranded at Barton over Christmas break, during which this coldhearted private school Scrooge gets a welcome chance to thaw.

The year is 1970, but The Holdovers is not your typical period movie. Instead, it feels as if Payne (a heroic film preservation advocate) unearthed this vintage artifact from the era in which it takes place. From the opening MPAA rating (a blue screen with the big R offset in a white strip) to the stylized treatments of the Focus Features and Miramax logos, plus strategically deployed zooms and a faux-celluloid filter applied in post, The Holdovers could pass for a lost Hal Ashby movie, circa The Landlord, right down to the character-focused, socially conscious way Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson go about telling the story.

But the story is just a delivery device for something altogether deeper and more humane. Peer beyond the perfectly satisfying Christmas-movie surface, and The Holdovers is a film about class and race, grief and resentment, opportunity and entitlement. Its that rare exception to the oft-heard complaint that they dont make em like they used to. The most obvious tell the giveaway that the movie was made in the 21st century is the presence of Paul Giamatti, even grumpier than we last saw him, reunited with the helmer who gave him his greatest role, as the curmudgeonly Miles in 2004s Sideways.

Hunham shares many of Miles, er, qualities: cynicism and frustration, coupled with a Tourette-like tendency to lash out at others, of whom hes either jealous or judgmental. Plus, he drinks too much. Theres a bit of Ignatius J. Reilly to Hunham or Mr. Walleye to his students, who trash-talk the taskmaster for his unfortunate ocular condition and the rotten-fish smell they associate with him though hes gainfully employed at a post far beneath his intellect. Hunham should be teaching the classics at an Ivy League school, instead of ancient history to ungrateful teens.

An early scene shows Hunham handing graded final exams back to his students, whom he refers to as vulgar little Philistines and reprobates. Most of them get Ds and Fs. One boy, a pompous rich kid planning to spend his holidays in St. Kitts, manages to score a B+. This is Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa, who suggests a young Adam Driver), who teases one of the classmates condemned to spend Christmas at Barton. No one wants this sentence, which is akin to being orphaned and worse, means being monitored at every moment by Mr. Hunham.

Normally holdover duty would fall to one of Hunhams colleagues, but the headmaster, one of his students from three decades earlier (Andrew Garman), has it out for his ex-teacher. The previous school year, Hunham flunked a legacy student, jeopardizing an important endowment. A graduate of Barton himself, Hunham has an entirely too rigorous set of expectations for the kids who pass through its halls today, fueled by what may well be a desire to see them do better than he has with his life. Theres a lot of self-hatred buried deep in the character, and excavating and addressing that is one of the many levels on which the movie succeeds. But more important is the dynamic between him and the other Christmas detainees.

At first, hes tasked with minding four boys unable to go home for the break. Then Angus mother calls and cancels their plans for St. Kitts. Suddenly, this brat is stuck doing time alongside the twerp hed tormented but not for long. Through a last-minute adjustment, the group shrinks to just Mr. Hunham, Angus and kitchen manager Mary (DaVine Joy Randolph), whos coping with the first Christmas without her son, Curtis, a graduate of Barton who was killed in Vietnam. Incidentally, Barton men almost never enlist. Their rich parents can usually pull strings, getting them placed in fancy universities. But Curtis didnt have the resources for that. And neither, we learn in time, did Paul Hunham.

As Paynes fans will recall, the satirists second feature, Election, also took place in high school. His worldview seems to have mellowed since, in a positive sense, which isnt a knock against the mocking sting of his earlier work so much as an appreciation of the way hes now able to put flawed characters in amusing situations, without rigging the laughs at their expense. Hunham demonstrates a formidable wit, launching into unsolicited anecdotes about ancient Rome and quoting Latin his listeners dont have the capacity to translate. Hes also wicked enough to extemporaneously lob Armando Iannucci-caliber insults at those he resents.

Its unfortunate for the students when those zingers are directed at them, but Hunham doesnt seem to realize that impressionable adolescents should be treated with, well, kid gloves. Luckily, Marys there to remind him, serving as both comedic relief and the films emotional core as Hunham slowly comes to acknowledge that hes taking his own disappointments out on Angus. As contemporary character actors go, no one does consternation better than Giamatti. But its more than just shtick here. Hunham wears his misanthropy like a kind of armor, and true to its early-70s influences, The Holdovers takes the time to chip away at that shell, revealing the personal details that explain so much of his and Angus psychology.

Payne teases several romantic subplots, flirting with the possibility of taking manipulative emotional shortcuts tricks that wouldve been surefire ways to wrench tears from his audience but wisely steers the focus back to his characters and the work they still need to do on themselves. It wouldve been too easy to go for the standard hero-teacher ending. Rather than serving up another Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Payne pioneers a more original Goodbye, Mr. Chip on His Shoulder.