‘The Holdovers’ review: Have a merry sweet-and-sour ‘70s Christmas with Paul Giamatti and company
At Barton Academy, the fictional all-male enclave in director Alexander Payne’s engaging gray-skies comedy “The Holdovers,” there are stuffy, imperious, demanding professors ― and then there’s Paul Hunham, the ancient civilizations specialist with a sub-specialty in student humiliation.
To Hunham, these boys with the hair (the year is 1970, when nobody thought much about barbers) and the attitude are either “cretins,” “vulgarians” or worse. This lonely man, typically tipsy by noon and dyspeptic by nature, has drawn the short straw this school year, requiring him to spend his winter holiday babysitting the “Christmas orphans,” the boys stuck at Barton for one reason or another.
This year’s holdovers include Hunham’s only decent student,
