The film stars Freddie Highmore, Odeya Rush, Haley Joel Osment, Christopher Meloni, and Marg Helgenberger.

Charlie's life takes an unpredictable turn, however, when he finds himself falling for local coffee shop barista Amber.

His friend Heather picks him up in the evening, and tries to convince him to join an upcoming party with their old high school classmates.

She has a mooching roommate, her cousin Jack, a track star boyfriend Brad and has steadfast plans to go to NYU in New York City in the fall.

They get to know each other, and he finds out she lives with Jack as her mom moved to Florida and she wanted to finish her senior year here, and she's been with Brad through most of high school.

On August 18, 2015, it was announced that the production on comedy-drama film Holding Patterns was underway, starring Freddie Highmore, Odeya Rush, Haley Joel Osment, Rita Volk, Jake Abel, and Taylor John Smith.

[5] In October 2017, Gravitas Ventures and Orion Pictures acquired distribution rights to the film, and set it for a November 17, 2017, release.

[7] In a positive review, Marjorie Baumgarten of the Austin Chronicle wrote, "[The film] has an easygoing charm that should earn it a solid place among the subset of movies about young people who emerge from their small-town cocoons and screw up their courage to take flight for the bright lights of New York City.

"[8] Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter described it less favorably as "a comic drama that's sometimes appealingly gentle but more often frustratingly amorphous" with "instances of wit and sensitivity scattered through the screenplay, but they have no cumulative impact amid the lackluster direction and general dearth of urgency.

"[9] Upon the film's theatrical release, Katie Walsh of the Los Angeles Times called the film's premise of Highmore's character, Charlie, tenuously pursuing a relationship with Rush's Amber despite her existing relationship, "painfully tone-deaf" in light of the onset of Me Too movement, suggesting it "feels like a relic of a bygone era, when movies could casually present stalking and coercion as acceptable forms of courtship.