The Holdovers Trailer: Paul Giamatti Reunites With Sideways Director Alexander Payne

Remember "Sideways"? The funny-but-kind-of-sad movie that made everyone hate Merlot? Well, the team of director Alexander Payne and star Paul Giamatti are reuniting for "The Holdovers." The new dramedy has Giamatti playing a miserable teacher who has to stay on his college campus during the Christmas break in order to watch over some students. That sounds like a recipe for something interesting, and of course, the crotchety teacher will soon find himself changing, especially after he starts bonding with one of his students. Cliched? Maybe, but the trailer for "The Holdovers" looks quite good, with a nice wintery vibe to match. It's a Christmas movie, after all. And it's arriving this fall. Watch the trailer below. 

I (mostly) enjoy the work of Alexander Payne, the filmmaker responsible for "Election," "About Schmidt," "Sideways," and more. His films do a good job of capturing lonely people who get into increasingly comical situations, learning something about themselves (and their loneliness) along the way. "The Holdovers" looks like it will be very much in line with several of Payne's other works, and if you like what he does, that'll be good news.

"The Holdovers" follows "a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa) — and with the school's head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da'Vine Joy Randolph)."

Paul "John Adams" Giamatti was born to play "a curmudgeonly instructor," so I imagine he'll knock this out of the park. Some of what's happening in this trailer looks a tad predictable, but I have a feeling that the trailer is just cut that way to appeal to a wider audience, and the film itself won't be so on the nose. Unless it is! We'll see. Look for "The Holdovers" in select theaters on October 27, 2023, and everywhere else on November 10, 2023.