Reviews for The Holdovers
Lillian Crawford, Little White Lies:
[The Holdovers] is never saccharine, or insufferably insular in its boarding school setting. Da’Vine Joy Randolph makes sure of that as the cook Mary Lamb who serves as our in, and our out, from this cushy space of privileged learning.
Her son was a pupil at the school as a perk of her employment, and while his peers went on to become lawyers and academics, he was killed in Vietnam.
Randolph, who all but stole Dolemite Is My Name from no less a comic legend than Eddie Murphy, pulls off the same feat with Giamatti.
Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press:
Randolph adds turbulent emotion to what could have been a tertiary, one-note character consumed in grief.
Randolph plays Mary as someone determinedly working through heartbreak while allergic to pity, from herself or from others.
It's not just the weary looks when Barton kids say casually racist, classist comments or the way she gently commiserates with Hunham over their shared break-time burden. It's how Randolph gives you glimpses into this woman's inner life in a way that feels like it goes beyond what's on the page.
Wesley Morris, The New York Times:
She’s given Mary a middleweight Boston accent — a middleweight Black Boston accent. And because she’s working at Payne’s soundboard of feeling, Randolph is encouraged to have a ball with abrasiveness, delicacy and brightness; half a dozen kinds of saltiness, too.