New in film: Barney's Version

Details

Starring Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike, Scott Speedman, and Minnie Driver. Directed by Richard J. Lewis. Written by Michael Konyves. Based on the novel by Mordecai Richler. 132 minutes. Rated R.

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More About

• Mordecai Richler
• Paul Giamatti
• Barney's Version
• Books and Literature
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

The late Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) was a bellicose practitioner of Jewish fiction in the manner of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, with a mad helping of Joseph Heller. So it comes as a big letdown that director Richard J. Lewis (who made Whale Music and a whole lot of CSI) has crafted such a mushy pudding out of Richler's 1997 last novel. Barney's Version misses every opportunity for raucous picaresque fun that the book throws its way, while squandering a wealth of transatlantic performing talent by Paul Giamatti. Giamatti mugs away gamely as the titular un-hero, a Montreal producer of schlock television whom we meet adjusting poorly to geezer status and reflecting, with insufficient Richleresque bile and many artless flashbacks, on his magnificently botched life. Regrets, Barney's had a few, leading with the loss of his adored third wife, Miriam (a coolly intelligent Rosamund Pike), and his ambiguous role in the death of a boozy literary mentor (Scott Speedman). Richler was a gleeful provocateur who wrote in funny, excoriating, entertainingly hectic prose and had passion to burn. Somnolently paced and emotionally constricted, Barney's Version never finds a rhythm or a theme to call its own. Worse yet, it strips the novel of its rich sense of place, and so of Richler's profane love for his beloved, bitterly divided Quebec.