Paul Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly, tough-on-the-outside but soft-on-the-inside professor who gets stuck spending Christmas break with prep school students who have nowhere else to go in Alexander Payne’s new comedy The Holdovers.

This marks a reunion between Giamatti and Payne nearly 20 years after their beloved 2004 drama Sideways.

The trailer, released on Monday, is heavily 1970s-styled, complete with a title card shown at the end boasting that the film is in color. Set during a New England winter in a stately, empty prep school for boys, the film tells the story of a young student at school over the holidays who goes head-to-head with a grumpy professor.

The Holdovers Is Dead Poets Society Meets A Man Called Otto

Though the trailer starts out with a lot of shouting and arguing, it hints that the frostiness between teacher and student might begin to thaw. The Holdovers is giving The Dead Poets Society meets A Man Called Otto energy.

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“I find the world a bitter and complicated space, and it seems to feel the same about me. I think you and I have this in common,” Giamatti’s Paul Hunham tells Angus (Dominic Sessa) in the trailer.

The film also stars Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the school’s head cook, who stays there for the holidays after losing her son in the Vietnam War.

The Holdovers is written by David Hemingson who also serves as a producer along with Mark Johnson and Bill Block. Executive producers include Andrew Golov, Thom Zadra and Chris Stinson.

From Focus Features, The Holdovers arrives in select theaters in New York City and Los Angeles on Oct. 27 and goes nationwide on Nov. 10.

Watch the trailer above.

Main Image: Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers.

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