The Holdovers
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Alexander Payne
Written by	David Hemingson
Produced by	Mark Johnson Bill Block David Hemingson
Starring	Paul Giamatti Da'Vine Joy Randolph Dominic Sessa
Cinematography	Eigil Bryld
Edited by	Kevin Tent
Music by	Mark Orton
Production companies	Miramax Gran Via
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	August 31, 2023 (2023-08-31) (Telluride) October 27, 2023 (2023-10-27) (United States)
Running time	133 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$20.7 million[2][3]

The Holdovers is a 2023 American Christmas comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by David Hemingson in his feature writing debut, and starring Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa. Set in 1970, the film follows a bad-tempered history teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to chaperone a handful of students with nowhere to go on Christmas break.

The Holdovers premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023, and was released in the United States by Focus Features on October 27, 2023. It received positive reviews and has grossed $20 million. It was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, and has received many other accolades, including two awards at the 81st Golden Globe Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Randolph) and Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Giamatti).

Plot[edit]

In December 1970, Paul Hunham is a strict, hidebound classics professor at Barton Academy, the New England boarding school that he once attended on scholarship. His students and fellow teachers dislike him for his harsh grading and stern attitude. Hunham's headmaster, Woodrup, berates him when he costs the academy an important donor by failing his son in his class, prompting Princeton University to rescind his offer of admission.

As punishment, Hunham is forced to supervise the "holdover" students left on campus for the holidays, including Angus Tully, whose mother abruptly cancelled a trip to Saint Kitts to honeymoon with his new stepfather. Also staying behind is cafeteria administrator Mary Lamb, who is grieving the loss of her son, a Barton alumnus killed serving in the Vietnam War.

To their dismay, Hunham imposes studying and exercise on the holdovers' break. After six days, the wealthy father of one of them arrives by helicopter and agrees to take all the students on the family's ski trip. Angus, unable to reach his parents for permission, is left alone at Barton with Hunham and Mary. Hunham catches him trying to arrange a hotel room, leading to a chase around the school until Angus defiantly leaps into a pile of gym equipment, dislocating his arm. At the hospital, Angus lies to protect Hunham from blame. Hunham later flirts with deputy headmistress Lydia Crane after meeting her at a restaurant, and she invites the pair to her Christmas Eve Party. He then deters Angus from an argument with a disabled war veteran.

On Christmas Eve, Angus, Hunham, Mary, and Barton's janitor, Danny, attend Lydia's party. While Angus flirts with Lydia's niece while finger-painting, Hunham is disappointed to discover Lydia has a significant other, and an inebriated Mary breaks down in the kitchen over her son's death. Hunham insists on leaving early, despite protests from Angus, who angrily blurts out that his father is dead, causing Mary to chastise Hunham for his insensitivity.

Having reflected upon his behavior, Hunham puts together a small Christmas celebration, and with Mary's persuasion, grants Angus's wish for a "field trip" to Boston. Dropping Mary off in Roxbury to spend time with her pregnant sister, Angus and Hunham bond over various activities in Boston, including ice skating and a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts. They bump into one of Hunham's classmates from Harvard University, who has become a successful academic. When prompted, Hunham lies about his career, with Angus playing along. After incessant questioning, Hunham confesses to Angus that he was expelled from Harvard after assaulting a peer, the son of a legacy donor who framed him for plagiarism, which ruined his career prospects. Thanks to the charity of one of his former teachers, he was able to secure a teaching position at Barton.

In the morning, Hunham discovers that he and Angus both suffer from depression after noticing that they take the same anti-depressant. When they go to see Little Big Man at the Orpheum Theatre, Angus sneaks away and Hunham catches him entering a taxi. Angus explains that his father is actually alive and confined at a nearby sanatorium. Hunham takes Angus to see his father, whose mental illness drove his family apart. Over dinner, he reassures an anxious Angus that he is not fated to be like his father. They join Mary and Danny to celebrate New Year's Eve, watching the Times Square Ball drop on TV and setting off an M-80 firework in the school kitchen.

When school resumes in January 1971, Hunham is summoned to Woodrup's office, confronted by Angus's mother and stepfather. They tell him that Angus's visit to his father was unauthorized and that the snow globe Angus gave him, which he stole from Lydia's party, led his father to have a violent episode. The mother and stepfather plan to send Angus to military school, but Hunham stands up for Angus and takes the blame for the trip. He is fired, but Angus is allowed to stay at Barton; Hunham decides to finally pursue his lifelong dream of visiting the ruins of Carthage.

Mary, who has come to better terms with the loss of her son, gives Hunham a notebook for the monograph he had long wanted to write. He and Angus share a heartfelt goodbye. Leaving the school, Hunham drinks the cognac he stole from the headmaster, before spitting some of it out toward the school and driving away.

Cast[edit]

Production[edit]

The Holdovers is the second collaboration between director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti after Sideways (2004). Payne conceived the concept after watching Marcel Pagnol's 1935 film Merlusse,^[4] and contacted screenwriter David Hemingson, whose boarding-school television pilot he had read.^[5] In June 2021, Miramax acquired the distribution rights.^[6] In early 2022, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Carrie Preston joined the cast.^[7][8]

Filming began in Massachusetts on January 27, 2022.^[9][10][11] Location manager Kai Quinlan, who had worked on other New England-set films like Spotlight and Black Mass, drew on her Massachusetts upbringing for the film.^[12] For the fictional Barton Academy, five Massachusetts schools were used as locations: Groton, Northfield Mount Hermon, Deerfield Academy, St. Mark's School and Fairhaven High School.^[13] Dominic Sessa, in his first film role as Angus, attended Deerfield in the class of 2022.^[14] The film also shot at the historic Somerville and Orpheum theatres, and on the Boston Common. Payne later said that capturing the 1970s aesthetic was relatively easy because "change comes slowly to New England".^[15]

Music[edit]

Original music for The Holdovers was composed by Mark Orton. It also features several classic Christmas songs, and other songs from the 1970s by The Allman Brothers Band, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Labi Siffre, Badfinger, Shocking Blue, Damien Jurado, Herb Alpert, Gene Autry, Temptations, Chet Baker, Artie Shaw, and Cat Stevens. The soundtrack was released digitally by Back Lot Music on November 10, 2023, and on compact disc and vinyl on November 17.^[16]

Release[edit]

A special screening of the film was held for buyers on September 11, 2022. The next day, it was reported that Focus Features had acquired distribution rights for $30 million.^[17] The film was scheduled for a limited theatrical release on November 10, 2023, followed by wide release on November 22.^[18] However, it was pushed up to a limited release on October 27, followed by a wide release on November 10.^[19] It is scheduled for release in the United Kingdom by Universal Pictures UK on January 19, 2024.^[1]

The Holdovers's world premiere was at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023.^[20][21] It also screened at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2023, where it was runner-up for the People's Choice Award.^[22][23] It was also invited to the 28th Busan International Film Festival's 'Icon' section, where it was shown on October 7, 2023.^[24]

Home media[edit]

The Holdovers was released on digital platforms on November 30, 2023, followed by a Blu-ray and DVD release on January 2, 2024.^[25]

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

The film made $211,093 from six theaters in its opening weekend, an average of $35,082 per venue.^[26] It expanded to 64 theaters in its second weekend, making $599,833.^[27] It then made $3.2 million from 778 theaters in its third weekend.^[28] Continuing to expand, it made $2.7 million in both its fourth and fifth weekends.^[29][30]

Critical response[edit]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 284 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Beautifully bittersweet, The Holdovers marks a satisfying return to form for director Alexander Payne."^[31] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[32] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it an 80% overall positive score.^[30]

Wesley Morris of The New York Times praised Giamatti's performance and Payne's direction, writing, "Even as the story accrues the heft of personal tragedy, each scene seems to float or bob."^[33] Patrick Ryan, writing for USA Today, compared it to Frank Capra’s It's a Wonderful Life, noting that both films grapple with troubled pasts and shattered dreams at Christmastime.^[34] Critics have also compared it to the films of Hal Ashby, such as Harold and Maude and The Last Detail.^[35][36]

Reviews in The Boston Globe and Boston.com both praised the film's 1970s New England setting.^[36][37] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post wrote that it "doesn't only have the look and feel of that time period, it resuscitates the finest elements of its narrative traditions".^[38] Richard Brody, writing for The New Yorker, described The Holdovers as "a pile of clichés", but one realized "with such loving immediacy that it feels as if Payne were discovering them for himself". Brody was more critical of the time period, arguing that the "hermetically sealed, historically reduced drama" ignored the politically fraught setting of the 1970s.^[39] Nonetheless, Michael Schulman, another writer for The New Yorker, included Giamatti, Sessa and Randolph in his list of the year's best performances, and considered the latter "in a prime position for the Best Supporting Actress race."^[40]

Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times praised the film's "enveloping sense of time and place", but as a whole, criticized it as "a flat, phony, painfully diagrammatic movie masquerading as a compassionate, humane one." Chang said that Mary Lamb, despite Randolph's affecting performance, was "somehow the movie's most under-developed role."^[35]

Filmmaker James Gray praised the film, saying "The film takes place in 1970, the first year of American history's greatest hangover. And the rhythms and look, precisely rendered, lend a bracing authenticity to the proceedings. More important, the movie recalls vividly both that era's glorious dreams and the stinging cost of idealism. These lonely souls may seem doomed, but they're still trying. And though bearing witness may not always be pretty, it is beautiful. So is The Holdovers."^[41]

Accolades[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• The Holdovers at IMDb