Barney's Version

Set across three decades and portraying the life of an unlikely (fictional) North American, in this case Canadian, hero born towards the end of the war, Barney’s Version might sound like the new Forrest Gump, but thankfully, proves to be anything but. Indeed, thanks in no small measure to Paul Giamatti giving his best performance since Sideways it will probably go down as one of the most entertaining films of 2011.

We first meet Barney Panofsky at a low point in his life. The producer of a terrible and inexplicably long running TV show, Barney is in a bad place as he approaches old age, drinking almost as much as his namesake in The Simpsons and pursued by renewed accusations concerning his involvement in a murder case many years before. Just as we’re starting to wonder how he got here, we begin to find out, as the film launches into an extended flashback which sees Barney transform from the youthful carefree hellraiser of the early 1970s through three failed marriages into the dejected old man he ultimately becomes. And yes, as with Citizen Kane most of this is revealed in the first few minutes.

With all his flaws so obviously on view, Barney seem a hard character to like. Indeed, were he a real person it’s doubtful we would. The fact that he manages to come across as a loveable rogue is down in no small measure to Paul Giamatti. Doing a largely convincing job of ageing from his early thirties to his late sixties, probably the worst that could be said of his Golden Globe winning performance is that it is perhaps a little too similar to the bookish booze hound he played in Sideways. Both characters have an unfortunate tendency to “drink and dial”, for example, and Giamatti repeats his trick for delivering unnerving maniacal laughter. But it’s still a fine performance.

And he’s not the only one. Rosamund Pike gives a brilliant turn in an eye catching role as the love of Barney’s life, radio star Miriam and Dustin Hoffman is on ever superb comic form as Barney’s father, an elderly Jewish Montreal ex-cop with a knack for precipitating hilariously embarrassing social situations. Minnie Driver (one of a few Brits in the cast) also makes a welcome return to the screen, as the amusing and neurotic Mrs Panofsky Number Two.

Both by turns funny and sad, Barney’s Version isn’t flawless. It takes a little bit too long to get into its stride. Also, despite superficial similarities to the 1990s TV show Due South, the Mountie-themed TV drama Barney works on (O’Malley of the North) seems too appalling to be as successful as it supposedly is. But overall, this captures the ups and downs of a very eventful life, very well.

Overall Verdict: Three marriages, some funerals, oceans of booze and a shooting. A truly entertaining biopic of a man who never existed.

Reviewer: Chris Hallam