I’m a huge fan of Alexander Payne (not just because my cousin produced About Schmidt). If you’re not familiar with his work, try Election, Sideways, and The Descendants.
The Holdovers (streaming on Amazon Prime) is Payne’s latest and features a teacher who loves giving bad grades so I can’t relate to that part (I don’t think that teachers should be allowed to grade their own students!). A Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopter makes an appearance so I will try to confine my review to what I know. First, the Bell holds a maximum of five people, including the pilot, and the movie suggests that at least six people go on a flight in the machine. The helicopter comes in because one prep school kid’s dad is supposedly the president of Pratt & Whitney and the machine is his corporate perk. But why would a Pratt executive travel around in a machine powered by an Allison (now Rolls-Royce) engine?
The arrival of the helicopter is handled accurately, with the pilot apparently doing a high recon before the off-airport landing. (Assess the following from 500′ above the ground: Wind, Wires, Way In, and Way Out; Shape, Size, Slope, and Surface)
A few points beyond the helicopter-only comments…
The movie, set in 1970, makes only a few concessions to 21st century social justice. No character is a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community. All of the Black characters are noble and exemplars of stable married life. Most of the white characters are deeply flawed and are either unmarried or divorced and remarried. The richer the white person, the worse he or she behaves (“he or she” because there were only two genders in the movie’s 1970). In fact, Paul Giamatti’s crusty teacher is too crusty for credibility. If he regularly gave a lot of mediocre students failing grades, the school would have axed him (or simply adjusted the grades he handed out). A private school teacher doesn’t have the union protection to do whatever he/she/ze/they wants as a public school teacher would. But it is still fun to watch him!
Readers: Who else saw this movie? What did you think? I wouldn’t say it is one of Payne’s best, but it is still better than 98 percent of what’s streaming today!
(We likely lost at least one great movie to California family law offering plaintiffs the chance to win a lifetime of ease following a brief sexual encounter. After three years of marriage, 34-year-old Sandra Oh sued Alexander Payne for divorce (Fox) and alimony (“spousal support”). The litigation to determine the profitability of her three-year marriage lasted for two-thirds the length of the marriage. The result was a gap in Payne’s filmography between 2004 and 2011. What did Sandra Oh do with the cash? Today she expresses her hopes for continued Hamas rule in Gaza (Variety), but it is unclear whether she’s donating funds to help the Palestinians liberate Al-Quds.)
If you’re interested in a possible route out of “more migrants; no more land” reducing living standards, check out Downsizing.
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1/5 stars. Terrible.
Imagine that you want to make a film that is an unholy amalgam of Scrooge, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Dead Poets’ Society and The Breakfast Club. Imagine that your audience is oblivious to any nuance and you’re not so creative, so you will need to employ the standard tropes of bratty prep school kids, mother whose son was killed before his time, bookish professor with a heart of gold and life lessons at the end for all our protagonists.
Trowel on the schmaltz like it’s wet concrete and multiply the cringe by 1000. Now you have a decent description of this movie.
Thanks, Mitch. But, more importantly, how did you like the helicopter scene?
@philg It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure I was grateful that the helicopter was able to transport some of the irritating characters out of the movie. Or at least for a significant fraction of it.