Reviews for The Holdovers
Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press:
Paul Giamatti stars in [The Holdovers] as Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly ancient history instructor whose only pleasure seems to be derived from holding his privileged students to account and failing them without regard for political considerations.
Giamatti — an actor who cannot be compared to any other actor in human history, in any medium — plays a history teacher living resolutely in the past.
He’s an artist who can make a symphony out of playing 12 different notes of pathetic, and make every dissonant suite sound natural.
Handing such a role to Giamatti is like handing the keys of a very expensive lab to Oppenheimer.
In addition to being funny as hell, Giamatti is a brilliant dramatic actor, and he invests his [character's] withering remarks with a French pastry's worth of layers.
As the son of onetime Yale University president A. Bartlett Giamatti, he grew up around both academia and East Coast snobbery. It's clear he knows the rules of this world, and all its injustices, intimately.
Paul Giamatti laid me out in the end with a gesture, a small callback that had me bawling right through to the credits.