What disturbs me most about Mordecai Richler's 1997 novel, Barney's Version, now available in a new paperback edition as well as a major motion picture with Paul Giamatti, is that it took me almost 15 ...

The dizzying comic energy and intellectual vigor of Mordecai Richler’s 1997 satire have largely been drained from director Richard J. Lewis’ agreeable but inevitably lesser version of “Barney’s ...

The late Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, best known south of the border for the film version of his 1959 novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, was a bellicose practitioner of Jewish fiction in ...

Paul Giamatti's never been high on my esteemed actors list. I don't go out of my way to see movies he's in because his characters always come off kind of schlubby to me. With "Barney's Version," ...

A middle-tier marriage drama distinguished by an excellent Paul Giamatti. Richler’s tome takes the form of Barney’s memoir (written in response to a nemesis’ slanderous allegations), allowing the ...

It's an impossible task trying to squeeze Mordecai Richler's sprawling novel about an SOB into one little movie. Sure enough, director Richard J. Lewis and screenwriter Michael Konyves can't do it.