i watched (quite some time ago)
The Holdovers -
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14849194/reference/
and i didn't really like it.
This is a very *serious* script, where Paul Giamatti is a teacher at a stuffy boarding school; mind you, this film is set in the present.
He's no Samuel L Jackson, Coach Carter levels of assholeness, but he's one of those oldschool teachers who believe they ethical duty is to be strict and firm in the way the grade students, to avoid any subconscious bias. As if that mattered.
Because of this very reason, he is stuck at school during a winter break, and has to watch over problem-students who aren't allowed off campus for the break due to punishment, or in the protagonist's case, because his parents are assholes. i should have prefaced that said student, Angus, is also an asshole, because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Then what you get is a kind-of Breakfast Club, or Footlose, where the normal and reasonable need for freedom of the students isn't met by disciplinarian antagonist, but rather by a caring tutor that's closer to the psychologist that robin williams played in Good Will Hunting, rather than some comically evil school principal.
Giamatti's initial disciplinarian attitude is something we, the audience, see through almost immediately. (Oh yeah and obviously Angus is actually a nice kid just trying to cope with a shitty family situation)
Whether this was intended or not, when the *extremely* predictable character arc changes Giamatti into a father-figure, we're left wondering why this story that we've seen a thousand times needed to be told yet again but without any frills, leaving instead just a rather boring drama that can't compete with what's been done before.
6/10 and i'm being extra extra generous. This film thinks it's the first time this story has been filmed.