Review: Bah, humbug! 'The Holdovers' is a clunky, phony white-elephant gift of a movie

Paul Hunham, the eloquent, embittered human wreck played by Paul Giamatti in Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers," is a man of many wretched ailments. He suffers from aches, hemorrhoids, lazy eye and trimethylaminuria, a rare genetic condition that causes him to reek of fish. He counteracts this problem, at least inadvertently, by drinking and smoking to excess; surely there's no odor that whiskey and pipe tobacco can't partly conceal. Asked about his single worst affliction, though, Paul might point to his young history students at Barton Academy, a New England prep school whose commitment to tradition, discipline and academic rigor he has devoted his life to upholding.

And a good thing too, since in Paul's own estimation, Barton boys are, with rare exception, a hopeless bunch of "philistines," "reprobates," "troglodytes," "degenerates," "hormonal vulgarians," "fetid layabouts" and "snarling Visigoths." That last jab speaks to Paul's deep knowledge of ancient civilizations, a field of