Though it’s wrong to think that curmudgeons are more complex than shiny, happy people are, it’s probably safe to assume they make more interesting movie characters — as long as you don’t have to live with them. In Barney’s Version, Richard J. Lewis’s adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel, Paul Giamatti plays the kind of guy most of us wouldn’t want to live with, a grouchy two-bit television exec who’s blown through several marriages and who doesn’t seem to have much use for anyone. But the modest trick of the performance, and of the movie around it, is that a person who seems wholly unbearable at first ends up being someone we can almost care about. That’s the power of art: What does it mean when you find yourself reaching out to a guy you can barely tolerate?
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REVIEW: Paul Giamatti Anchors a Sprawling Barney’s Version
