Director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti have done it again.

Here’s another quirky, enjoyable film as two reunite for “The Holdovers,” about a cranky professor and a sometimes-obnoxious prep-school student who end up spending Christmas break together.

‘The Holdovers’ (IMDb)

First, the look of the movie hearkens back to the 1970s. The graininess of the images makes it feel as though you’ve traveled back in time to see film in that era.

Giamatti is Professor Paul Hunham, who teaches ancient history at the prep school Barton Academy in New England. Paul, who is much-loathed, snarls at his students – sometimes jokingly, most often not – and refers to them as “troglodytes.”

He’s not afraid to flunk his students, who have their minds on only one thing during this last class before break, and that’s going home. When one student earns a D on his test, he said, “I don’t understand.”

“That’s glaringly apparent,” Paul snarls.

Although the two-week break is at hand, Paul is stuck with several students, or “holdovers,” who aren’t going home and turn Paul into an unwilling babysitter.

Paul is snide and arrogant, but he’s smart. He’s a multi-dimensional character who grows on the viewer.

Not so much with student Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa,) an overachieving know-it-all who rubs nearly everyone the wrong way. He becomes more sympathetic when we watch one side of a phone conversation in which it’s obvious his newly married mother doesn’t want him to come home so she and her husband can have some “alone time.”

When the two are left together on campus, they’re kept company, and nourished, by the head cook (a wonderful Da’Vine Joy Randolph,) who has her own reasons for staying behind.

If you appreciate Payne’s “Nebraska” and “Sideways,” you’re sure to like this one, too. It reminds me a lot of “The Station Agent,” another film about people who are forced together creating their own community.

We watch as the characters argue, support each other, and change each other’s perspectives in a story that isn’t rollicking or laugh-out-loud funny, but still contains threads of hope.

4 stars

Rated: R for foul language and adult themes.

In theaters.

Watch the trailer here.