For his role in “Barney’s Version,” Paul Giamatti won a Golden Globe in the category of best actor in a comedy or musical. But this movie isn’t really funny and you sure can’t dance to it. However, it is Giamatti’s unique sad sack charm and ability to calibrate a potentially overdone character part that counters a natural aversion to today’s version of “Barney.” Based on the 1997 novel by Mordecai Richler, Canada’s lesser answer to Philip Roth, the screenplay adaptation by Michael Konyves tries to offer a distasteful but still sympathetic Barney Panofsky.
By casting Giamatti, television director Richard J. Lewis made the choice that saves an initially sardonic picture, which suddenly becomes maudlin in the seemingly endless final half-hour. Only the unconventional leading man — known for making depressives delightful in “American Splendor,” “Sideways,” and HBO’s “John Adams” — could sell a protagonist who transgresses with so little shame.
