The first thing I'd like to know is how a guy like Barney Panofsky manages to wind up in marriage with three beautiful women like Clara Chambers (Rachelle Lefevre), the second Mrs. P (Minnie Driver) and Miriam Grant (Rosamund Pike). I don't mean the actor Paul Giamatti who portrays Barney, but an actual guy like Barney who runs a porn studio and doesn't have any kind of personal charm and even less sex appeal. It boggles my mind, but then I remind myself it's just a story. Now Minnie Driver, something happened along the way between 1997's "Good Will Hunting" and this picture, she's absolutely stunning here. And Rosamund Pike always looks good, but how her character turned on a dime to wind up with Barney wasn't adequately made clear in the picture to my thinking. All those caveats aside though, I thought this was an interesting movie with unusual situations and an intriguing cast of characters. It took a while for me to accept Dustin Hoffman's Izzy as the father of Barney, because to me, they looked about the same age in the picture, but Hoffman is thirty years older than Giamatti, so at least the math works. I wasn't expecting Barney to go the Alzheimer's route to close out the story but just like everything that went before, real life happens while you're out there making other plans. I like these kinds of quirky movies, and if you do too, you'll probably enjoy "Barney's Version", even if it strains real life credibility.
Review of Barney's Version
Barney's Version
(2010)
"The universe works in strange and mysterious ways."
11 October 2019
Warning: Spoilers