Paul Giamatti is a middle-aged misanthropic history teacher at a
prestigious New England prep school. His students hate him and he hates
them. The Christmas holidays arrive and somebody has to stay at the
school with the eight or so unlucky young fellows whose families don't
want them around at home for whatever various reasons and somebody on
the faculty has to get stuck with babysitting the holdovers for a couple
of weeks. Guess who gets the job?

Fate conspires to whisk all but one of the boys away, leaving one
seethingly resentful Giamatti to deal with one seethingly resentful boy
(Dominic Sessa) and the school cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, with her own
devastating problems) at Christmastime. So what do you think happens?

You know how A MAN CALLED OTTO was a perfectly nice, perfectly
unsurprising but entertaining way to spend a couple of hours? Well,
that's this movie too. I laughed pretty often, actually, and had a good
time. If you're looking for a nice night out at the movies, sure -- go
see it. Otherwise wait for streaming.

So how old is Dominic Sessa really? In the film I kept being distracted
by a character who looks late 20s being treated like a character who's
supposedly 17. I looked him up and found several sites that said he was
born Jan. 1, 1990, and frankly just looking at him I could believe he's
now over 30. But the Deerfield Academy website says he's a member of
their class of '22. So I guess he was just a high school student who
looked like a grown man when he made the movie. It can happen, I guess.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog