“And the Romans bathed naked in the freezing Tiber. Adversity builds character, Mr. Tully.”

Justin’s rating: A slow, mellow, and satisfying sip of film

Justin’s review: What happens when most everyone leaves a prep school for Christmas break — and a few “holdovers” stay behind? That’s probably not something most people have thought about, but it does make for a dramatic and kind of bittersweet film that focuses on a handful of people whiling away several weeks in an expansive, empty campus.

The Holdovers went to painstaking lengths to create a very ’70s feel, right down to the look of the film stock. This helps reinforce the movie’s 1970 setting at Barton Academy in New England, where Christmas break might as well be Christmas heartbreak for three stranded souls.

There’s Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a lazy-eyed curmudgeonly professor who’d rather be left alone and takes it out on his students by being an inflexible dictator. He’s assigned to watch Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a bright yet troubled teen whose mother left him at school over the holidays to go on her honeymoon. And then there’s Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), a grieving school cook who recently lost her son in Vietnam.

Each of the three is harboring a whole lot of pain and anger, and it turns out that this break might be the therapy session they all need… in a very weird way. Tully and Hunham greatly dislike each other from the start, but their mutual isolation drives them together to a sort of wary friendship. The three even end up going on a road trip together, something that would’ve been out of the question at the start of the break.

Giamatti, that character actor of character actors, embodies such a wonderfully offputting yet lovable persona with Hunham. He’s saddled with physical issues — walleyed, smells like fish, excessive sweating — and talks like he’s writing a textbook. Yet he’s got hidden depths and may actually be a great teacher… if he can only find students he didn’t despise.

I was hoping for a lot more comedy to go with this unique premise, but you know what was a nice consolation prize? Actually getting to know three people over the course of a couple hours. There’s always something to find out about these characters as their backstories, motivations, and various traumas unfold. This is a true journey of relationships, and by the end of it, not one of the three will be the same.

I also liked the occasional moments when the movie’s music took over the entire soundtrack, much like those mellow musical interludes you might hear at home over the holidays.

The approach to this movie, as far as I could tell, is  that there’s a certain catharsis to bringing your heroes low so that you can raise them up high. Christmastime tends to bring out these heightened emotions, and if you have someone to share them with, the bad ones aren’t quite as bad and the good ones are even gooder.

Yes, I’m a professional writer.

Intermission!

• All the old timey studio logos to mark the movie’s era
• “We cannot sacrifice our integrity on the altar of their entitlement.”
• I like that corner chalkboard
• Selling the Christmas tree back to the lot just to save a bit of money? That’s really cheap.
• “How are the boys?” “Broken in body and spirit.”
• That’s a whole lot of detentions
• “Without exercise, the body devours itself!”
• “Barton boys don’t go to Vietnam. They go to Yale or Dartmouth or Cornell, whether they deserve to or not.”
• Fingerpainting on Christmas Eve
• Meditations is a good book for everyone
• This movie ruined candy canes for me
• “Ancient cameras, where the hell did you come up with that?”
• Smoking pipes in movie theaters — what a long way we’ve come
• “Stand up for the lady, you boor!”
• How to make cherries jubilee