The Holdovers (#489)

The day after Thanksgiving my daughters and I saw THE HOLDOVERS, which I now dub an almost feel good movie.  I say ‘almost' because I wasn’t completely happy with the ending.  But it was a fine, old fashioned kind of comedy and dramatic movie, beautifully acted by the always excellent Paul Giamatti and a first class cast.  In the one, Giamatti is a curmudgeonly ancient history teacher in a New England prep school who is not dearly loved by his students or the administration.  The holdovers are those students who, for one reason of another, are not going home for the Christmas holidays, and Giamatti is given the unenviable task of “baby sitting” them, an unhappy situation for everyone involved.  There are only two other people at the school, a maintenance man and a cook to prepare meals for all.  The cook, who has recently lost her son in Vietnam,  seems to be the only one willing to tolerate Giamatti and his attitude and actions.  Eventually only one student remains in his charge, a young man left in school because his mother and her new beau or husband want to be alone.  Lots of funny and poignant and predictable and unpredictable events do nothing to diminish the effectiveness of the movie and before long, student and teacher bond and  share life stories when at the student’s request, they illegally leave the campus to go to Boston.  Needless to say, we all liked this one and for a change, 96% of critics and 90% of audiences agreed and gave it a thumbs up.