Heartfelt and unashamedly sentimental, Barney's Version is an indulgent comedy based on the 1997 novel by Mordechai Richler with odd cameos for classy Canadian names like Denys Arcand and David Cronenberg – something that has no effect on the middlebrow-soft-focus feel of the whole enterprise. It nonetheless has a puppyish, or perhaps rather doggyish charm and an old-fashioned commitment to storytelling. Paul Giamatti plays a complacent, brash, hard-drinking-and-smoking Jewish guy in Montreal with a murky past, who got rich producing a soap opera on Canadian TV. His first wife committed suicide; he abandoned his second wife (Minnie Driver) on their wedding day to pursue the elegant woman who became wife number three – Miriam, played by Rosamund Pike. Giamatti relaxes into this role as if into a ratty old dressing gown; Dustin Hoffman twinkles and grins incorrigibly as Barney's dad (but he's better here than in those Fockers movies). It's all as warm and fuzzy as the smoke from Barney's cigars, and just as much of an acquired taste.