At Barton Academy, the fictional all-male enclave in director Alexander Payne’s engaging grey-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 and the attitude are either “cretins,” “vulgarians” or worse.
While people used the F-word in 1970 , screenwriter Hemingson settles once too often for routine profanity for a punchline. It feels somewhat at odds with the setting and the era, the way Hemingson writes, anyway. And while Randolph’s grieving character comes into deserved prominence as the story progresses, there’s a dimension to Mary missing on the page. Too often it’s up to the performer to fill in the details.