Barton Academy somewhere in New England, December, 1970- Ready to head home from boarding school over Christmas break, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) is abandoned by his mother to be one of five holdovers, and soon the only holdover, who stays over break under the watch of classics teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a bitter, cruel man reviled by peers and students alike who transparently takes his struggles out on his charges. The duo butt heads, but eventually learn that they’re not so – well, no, they’re both terrible, but they learn to stick up for each other.  

The Holdovers is the kind of jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold tearjerker that I just can’t get much out of. The jerk, invariably, doesn’t have a heart of gold – both Tully and Hunham are acting out to mask unfair things that have happened to them, which are revealed dramatically, and that kind of cheap emotional heel-turn doesn’t affect me. We all face hardships, handling them poorly doesn’t make you special, and there’s no level of hardship that absolves you of your choices.

It also doesn’t help that their hardships don’t line up with each other at all. The film’s “three broken people,” Tully, Hunham and head cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) – she doesn’t get as many lines and doesn’t lash out like the other two, is why she’s off to the side here – are all coping with losses that are different enough that the film can’t develop much of a thesis other than “grief bad, be nicer.” Their losses are even set across different times, with Lamb grieving the immediate loss of her son to the Vietnam War, Hunham taking out his past and Tully anxious about his future.

The Holdovers feels semi-autobiographical, but doesn’t have much of a soul. It’s a converted TV pilot from writer/producer David Hemingson based on people in his life, but not events. The film’s extremes felt hollow and artificial anyway, and knowing that they are doesn’t make it much better.  

The window itself is interesting. Director Alexander Payne used 35mm film, lenses, shots and editing techniques popular in the early 70s, and the movie has a much stronger period feel than films that rely only on set design and music to produce their period aesthetic. The Holdovers is casual and much more effective, so hopefully we’ll see more of this mentality applied in the future.

The time period is the one unifying aspect – Vietnam, the generation’s mass death, hangs over each of our heroes. Lamb has lost her son to the war, and Tully will be sent there if he’s kicked out of yet another boarding school. Hunham is far too old, but his stalled adult life and his anger over it represents another kind of death.

There’s plenty of effort here, I just don’t get much out of it.

Leopold Knopp is a UNT graduate. If you liked this post, you can donate to Reel Entropy here. Like Reel Entropy on Facebook and reach out to me at reelentropy@gmail.com.