Film Review - The Holdovers (2024)

The Holdovers is the new film by Alexander Payne and takes place in the Winter of 1970 in a New England school where one of the students Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa in his first film role) is left behind as a holdover due to his parents going away for the holidays and he is left with a cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who is mourning the loss of her son in the Vietnam War and a crusty History teacher (Paul Giamatti) and these 3 people could have more in common than they think.

The Holdovers is very good and throughout some of its early scenes I thought to myself “This could be my favourite film of the year so far” and while it doesn’t quite hit that mark it is still on the list along with Force of Nature: The Dry 2 and The Beekeeper and to have 3 in February is the sign of a good start to a movie year and one of the reasons for this is Payne’s direction, he does a great job at not just directing his actors but also making the New England school feel like this eco system unto itself that is isolated from the outside world.

And also I really like his portrayal of these 3 lonely people who could make up this makeshift family, the crusty father, the distant but loving mother and the wayward son trying to find his way in the world and the script by David Hemingson also helps as well in making these characters feel real and believable as you feel like when watching it that you’ve come across people like these in your own life.

And the performances are a real boost as well, Randolph is very good as Ms Lamb the cook and while she is doing her best to keep it together there are times where you see her struggling with the loss of her son and its tough to watch, Giamatti is excellent and if it wasn’t for Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer he would be a shoe in for Best Actor at the Academy Awards as he is that good here as this History teacher who asks a lot of his students but does so so they don’t end up making a similar or the same mistake he made with his life many years before.

But the real find is Dominic Sessa, this is his first movie and he really shines here as this troubled young boy on his way to becoming a man and while he has very little in his way you can see that he lacks that strong familial stability in his life that can make living be worthwhile and give you that everlasting love outside of that special someone you find in life and I hope I see more of him in movies in the years to come.

But if I have one problem with this movie it is that it’s too long and as good as this movie is I felt that it did start to peter out towards the end of the film and the end in particular I felt ran on too long and a good 15 minutes or so could’ve been removed from this movie and not affected things too much.

And so that was the Holdovers and it’s very good but too long, 3 and a half out of 5.