If the best picture Oscar was handed out to the film that elicited the warmest collective glow from cinemagoers, bookmakers would have long since stopped accepting bets on The Holdovers. Does anyone anywhere actively dislike Alexander Payne’s boarding school drama? If they do they’re keeping very quiet. It’s a film that, in its dopamine hit of warm nostalgia, seems pretty much backlash proof.
Curiously though, it’s that same quality that, for some, will mean that The Holdovers wouldn’t be a deserving best picture winner. Film history, after all, doesn’t like to reward the feelgood. Think of some of the most celebrated Oscar winners and they tend to be heavy, pessimistic works – The Godfather Part II, The Silence of the Lambs or No Country for Old Men. Similarly, “nice” best picture winners tend to be damned for that niceness – Forrest Gump, say, or more recently Coda. Granted, the Holdovers is a cut above either of those films, but it does seem destined to be pigeonholed as this year’s cheery indie contender in a lineup largely made up of weighty, serious films.
