Movie Review: “The Holdovers” — Emotional Treacle
By Anne Bernays
From the moment I saw a promotional photo of the three starred actors of “The Holdovers” I knew what was going to unfold in this startlingly over-praised, predictable movie.
So here you have a black woman, a man in a funny hat, and a scowling teenager. In the background is a brick and mortar monument to tradition, moral sturdiness, and incarceration. This is an ivy league feeder, a New England prep school kept alive by generous donors, most of them former students.
Paul Giamatti is a pretty good actor; in “Sideways” he was a convincing, though somewhat tedious drunk on the way to rehabilitation. In this movie, Giamatti hams it up without apparent hesitation, mocking his own character, and with as much subtlety as a paid performer at a kid’s birthday party.
This movie has been touted as “they don’t make them like this anymore,” a sentiment I find unwittingly ironic.
As a novelist and teacher of writing, I know the basics of a tight story. This movie is so tight, however, that given the opening few scenes backed by Christmas music, you really don’t have to bother to watch it; even the most naïve among its viewers know its going to end in a lovefest between the three holdovers, punished by fate to remain in the schoolhouse while all the others—students, teachers, employees, are given a much-needed holiday.
For those of you who don’t know anything about “The Holdovers,” here’s the basic story. Despised history teacher (we’re told over and over again in many way, how everybody hates him) is selected to “baby-sit” those unfortunate students who have no where to go over the Christmas holiday. There are a few other “orphans,” but they are speedily dispatched by kindly karma and so that leaves history teacher, troubled and dare I say obnoxious student, and kindly cook, who has recently lost her only son to an unspecified war.
The teacher and the student start to bond with each other and with the cook, played by a wonderful actor, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the only person connected with this movie who has the nerve to be subtle.
A couple of mini plots are simmering on the stove: a party, where the teacher suffers a romantic disappointment, a confession by the teacher to the student that he (the teacher) was kicked out of Harvard for a “crime” no one in the audience could possibly believe, and an unlikely trip to Boston where teacher and student do the usual sight-seeing, along with a side trip to visit the student’s father holed up in an old folks home. Of course his father doesn’t recognize him, but we had to see the blank stare on his face. There’s not a single original thought, idea, or camera angle in any of the footage.
Whoever was responsible for this film served us weak broth when we were expecting a steaming bowl of New England clam chowder.
