Review of Barney's Version (2010) by Filipe C — 13 Feb 2011

Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti) is 65 years old and lives in Montreal. He drinks too much and smokes cigars and harasses his ex-wife's husband. One day while drinking and smoking he stares a little too long at an old photo and next thing you know we're all transported back to 1974.

Young Barney is a lot like old Barney except with more hair. He lives in Paris and hangs out with a trio of guys who have loud, jovial, incoherent conversations. There's a druggie named Boogie, a black guy named Cedric, and an Italian artist named Leo. This is a seriously annoying part of the film, but luckily it doesn't last long. After a brief marriage, Barney is back in Montreal, producing a soap opera.

It doesn't take Barney long to get married again, this time to an unnamed woman played by Minnie Driver, who's loud and abrasive and enjoys bragging about her master's degree. She also has a very rich father. I'm not sure what she sees in Barney or he in her really, but before the reception is even over, he's off hitting on someone else.

Miriam Grant (Rosamund Pike) is young and beautiful and conversant about hockey, which very much impresses Barney because not only is he a huge hockey fan, but the Canadiens just happen to be playing in the Stanley Cup finals that very night. Though she resists for a while, eventually Miriam becomes Mrs. Barney Panofsky number three.

Now in case you don't know what Paul Giamatti looks like, try to imagine a paunchy, bug-eyed, red-bearded, chinless troll. Though this look can make him somewhat endearing when accompanied by a hapless, kind-hearted, lovable-loser personality, when playing a character who's a grouchy, selfish, malcontent, there's absolutely nothing to mitigate his homeliness. Which raises the question: why do attractive women keep falling for him?

Maybe the first two women had issues of their own, which might have made Barney seem like a "catch", but it's almost incomprehensible that a beautiful, successful, hockey-conversant woman like Miriam Grant would fall for a chinless troll like Barney who not only has the audacity to start pursuing her before the ink is even dry on his marriage certificate, but arrives so drunk for their first post-divorce lunch date that he ends up getting sick and passing out before it's over. Now I have no actual studies to back me up on this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and surmise that very few first dates involving vomit ever result in marriage.

The idea that Miriam would just overlook these things once it becomes apparent that Barney is really crazy about her is just ridiculous. First of all, learning that someone is crazy about you doesn't automatically make you crazy about them, as appealing as that idea might be. And secondly, finding out that someone is crazy about you who barely even knows you isn't at all flattering; it's off-putting and just highlights their superficiality. But enough unsolicited dating advice.

The other major relationship in the film is the one between Barney and his coarse, retired-cop father Izzy (Dustin Hoffman). Though Izzy occasionally embarrasses Barney with his lack of refinement, Barney loves him and would defend him to the death. If this sounds familiar, it's because you've probably seen this same dynamic in dozens of movies and even sitcoms, for that matter...the TV show Frasier comes to mind.

Another plotline that keeps surfacing involves a possible crime committed in Barney's youth that he may or may not have gotten away with. There's a grizzled cop who's made the case his life's work, even writing a book about it. To say that I didn't care how, or even if, this mystery was ever resolved is overstating the intensity of my feelings.

"Barney's Version" is based on a novel of the same name which I've never read and hadn't even heard of before the film came out, so I'm judging the movie purely on the movie itself. Since it's 132 minutes long, I can only guess that the book is an enormous rambling tome. I often got the sense that characters who were sketchily written in the movie (almost everyone except Barney, Izzy, and Miriam), must've been far more fleshed out in the book or they wouldn't have even bothered to include them.

I didn't absolutely hate this movie, nor did a particularly like it. It's a sprawling film about the not-particularly-interesting life of an unpleasant little man who's inexplicably successful with women. If you like that sort of thing, then by all means rush right out and see it.