The Holdovers is a 2023 American Christmas comedy drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by David Hemingson, and starring Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa.

The Holdovers premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023, and was released in the United States by Focus Features on October 27, 2023.

In December 1970, Paul Hunham is a teacher at Barton Academy, a New England all-male boarding school that he once attended on scholarship.

Dr. Woodrup, Barton's headmaster and Hunham's former student, scolds him for costing the academy money by flunking a major donor's son, causing Princeton University to rescind his offer of admission.

As punishment, Hunham is forced to supervise five students left on campus during the Christmas holiday break, including Angus Tully, whose mother cancelled a family trip to Saint Kitts to instead honeymoon with her new husband.

Also staying behind is cafeteria manager Mary Lamb, whose late son, Curtis, attended Barton and recently died in the Vietnam War after being drafted.

After dropping off Mary in Roxbury to spend time with her pregnant sister, Angus and Hunham walk through Boston, ice skate and visit the Museum of Fine Arts.

Although the incident nearly ruined Hunham's career prospects, the old Barton headmaster took pity on him and offered him an adjunct teaching job.

Payne conceived it after watching Marcel Pagnol's 1935 film Merlusse,[5] and contacted screenwriter David Hemingson, whose boarding-school television pilot he had read.

[7] In 2024, Hemingson revealed that the film is partially semi-autobiographical, with some of the dialogue and scenes taken verbatim from his own life, such as words from his own real-life uncle.

The scene with the sex worker was inspired by a real-life incident that he said actually "happened to me on First Avenue and 30th Street with [my uncle] when I was seven years old.

[15] Similarly, Giamatti drew on his experience attending Choate Rosemary Hall in the 1980s, including his memories of a strict teacher whom he described as "not a happy man.

[20] One of the film's plot points involves Paul Hunham’s amblyopia (sometimes called lazy eye), one of several health problems the character suffers from.

Patterson told Vanity Fair writer Katey Rich that each lens required multiple attempts to get the color correct.

Giamatti told Vanity Fair that "adjusting to the ways the lens limited me physically gave me a lot to work with imaginatively that I can’t even articulate.

"[21] To make the film look and feel like it was actually made during the 1970s, Alexander Payne hired Eigil Bryld to serve as cinematographer and camera operator.

Although the film's international prints (distributed by Universal Pictures) could simply use the 1963 Universal logo to open the film, neither Focus Features nor Miramax (the American distributor and production company) existed in the 1970s, so Carlson had to invent an original symbol for Focus Features (that involved lowercase "ff" initials with animated text moving into place on a red background) and a looped zoom-in animation for Miramax.

For the film's title card, Carlson kept things simple, using a custom font of his own design while staying in line with Payne's vision.

[24] The soundtrack also features several classic Christmas songs, and other songs from the 1970s by The Allman Brothers Band, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Labi Siffre, Badfinger, Shocking Blue, Damien Jurado, Herb Alpert, Gene Autry, Temptations, Chet Baker, Artie Shaw, and Cat Stevens.

The next day, it was reported that Focus Features had acquired distribution rights outside the Middle East and Turkey for $30 million.

The website's consensus reads: "Beautifully bittersweet, The Holdovers marks a satisfying return to form for director Alexander Payne.

[41] Wesley Morris of The New York Times praised Giamatti's performance and Payne's direction, writing: "Even as the story accrues the heft of personal tragedy, each scene seems to float or bob.

"[45] Patrick Ryan, writing for USA Today, compared it to Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, noting that both films grapple with troubled pasts and shattered dreams at Christmastime.

[48][49] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post wrote that it "doesn't only have the look and feel of that time period, it resuscitates the finest elements of its narrative traditions".

[50] Richard Brody, writing for The New Yorker, described The Holdovers as "a pile of clichés", but one realized "with such loving immediacy that it feels as if Payne were discovering them for himself".

Brody was more critical of the time period, arguing that the "hermetically sealed, historically reduced drama" ignored the politically fraught setting of the 1970s.

[51] Nonetheless, Michael Schulman, another writer for The New Yorker, included Giamatti, Sessa and Randolph in his list of the year's best performances, and considered the last "in a prime position for the Best Supporting Actress race".

"[53] In March 2024, Variety reported that screenwriter Simon Stephenson had lodged a complaint with the Writers Guild of America, accusing the film's screenplay of plagiarizing an unproduced script he wrote titled Frisco.