The Holdovers(2023)

Storyline

• Nobody likes teacher Paul Hunham (Giamatti) -- not his students, not his fellow faculty, not the headmaster, who all find his pomposity and rigidity exasperating. With no family and nowhere to go over Christmas holiday in 1970, Paul remains at school to supervise students unable to journey home. After a few days, only one student holdover remains -- a trouble-making 15-year-old named Angus, a good student whose bad behavior always threatens to get him expelled. Joining Paul and Angus is head cook Mary (Randolph)- who caters to sons of privilege and whose own son was recently lost in Vietnam. These three very different shipwrecked people form an unlikely Christmas family sharing comic misadventures during two very snowy weeks in New England. The real journey is how they help one another understand that they are not beholden to their past-they can choose their own futures. New England, December 1970. Having caught unwelcome attention after getting up the headmaster's nose, Paul Hunham, the prestigious Barton Academy's sardonic, inflexible Ancient Civilisations teacher, now pays the price. As a result, saddled with supervising five holdovers, students who can't return home for Christmas break, Paul must follow the school's standard schedule and endure two long weeks with the unwanted sons of privilege. After all, it's not that the unloved professor had any plans for the holidays. Now stuck with babysitting duty, the unwavering curmudgeon has one final chance to look life straight in the eye, stay true to himself, and reevaluate the quiet power of unexpected kindness and friendship. But what could a brilliant academic have in common with a bright teenage rebel and a grieving cafeteria manager? — Nick Riganas It's December 1970 and school is out for the Christmas holiday. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances some won't be leaving for the holiday: one teacher and five teens will spend Christmas at the school. The curmudgeonly teacher, Paul Hunham, is out to make the experience as school-like as possible. — grantss In 1970, at the Brandon boarding school, Professor of Ancient History Paul Hunham is loathed by his students, by the other teachers and by the headmaster. He spends his life reading books alone in his apartment at Brandon. During the Christmas holidays, the headmaster Dr. Hardy Woodrup assigns Hunham to stay at Brandon taking care of four students that failed the tests or have no family available in the period. Together with Hunham, stay the manager of the cooks Mary Lamb, who grieves the loss of her son in the Vietnam War, and the troubled student Angus Tully, since his divorced mother recently remarried and wants to spend the period traveling in honeymoon with her new wealthy husband. Near Christmas, the four other students are released and Hunham, Mary and Tully have to stay together, and they learn more about each other's life. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil