THE HOLDOVERS (B) - If I want to see a Hal Ashby movie, I'll rent one. What I don't need is a note-for-note period piece shot as if it were produced in 1970 or 1971, not just taking place in that year.
The opening credits of this movie -- about a prep school teacher and a student stranded together over winter break -- faithfully re-create the mood, style and font of classics from the American New Wave, and the mood never budges from that of movies like Ashby's "Harold & Maude" (down to the Cat Stevens needle drop) or Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces." The gimmick -- extended for the length of two and a quarter hours -- is so self-consciously indulgent that it can take you out of the movie from the start and make it nearly impossible to get back into the actual story.
And that's not an insignificant complaint. This film is intended to casually unfold some emotional bonding not just between Professor Paul Hunham (a weary Paul Giamatti) and his young ward Angus Tully (drab newcomer Dominic Sessa), but also between the men and the campus cook, Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Rudolph), who is mourning the recent death of her son in Vietnam. But mix and match them every which way you can, and you'll be hard pressed to bind anything resembling an authentic connection among them. By the end of this glum, slow-paced drama (with dashes of dry, acerbic wit), we are left with three people who still don't have much in common and who haven't gained much insight into one another.
Rudolph's Mary is the classic (stereotypical?) noble working-class mother, and she doesn't get much to do here besides be sassy around these two under-achievers. Giamatti makes for a good shlub and an amusing nudnik, but it feels like we've seen him shovel this stuff before. Sessa is a bit of a cipher as Angus, who is kinid of a Holden Caulfield Without a Clue. His dad is dead and his mother has remarried a rich guy, and so she has dumped Angus into yet another prep school hoping he won't crash and burn there like at the previous ones. Angus is supposed to be a bit of a rebel, but he seems more lazy and disaffected than anything else. Put these three together, and you've got ... not fireworks, but maybe a couple of sparklers
This film reunites director Alexander Payne with Giamatti 20 years after their breakthrough, the indie touchstone "Sideways." Here Payne realizes a script by TV journeyman David Hemingson, with dialogue peppered with a good share of zingers but serving a story that meanders and wallows in its doldrums. The film is easily a half hour too long. A late plot twist doesn't have nearly the impact intended, and the lessons learned by everyone here on their various journeys come across as underwhelming and unearned.
That's not to say it's a bad movie. It's pretty good at times. Most everyone I know swears by it as a new masterpiece from Payne, who had a good run a decade ago with "The Descendants" and "Nebraska." It's been even longer since his millennial hat trick of "Election," "About Schmidt" and "Sideways." We can't blame the sloppy story on him this time, but he needed more discipline to shape this into a more convincing period piece. And he needed to drop the overly reverent New Wave shtick (and the cheap use of era-appropriate songs). These three characters deserved better. So does Hal Ashby and his contemporaries.
BONUS TRACK
The twee soundtrack also includes lethargic faux period pieces, like this dreary tune from 2014 by Damien Jurado, "Silver Joy":
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