I have just seen Barney's verison! And boy, was it hard to see...
I had to go to the only theatre in Minnesota where it was playing and it wasn't a really good neighborhood. There was only one theatre in the place and the chair I sat on was torn up and very squeaky...
The previews were also mostly foreign ones and ones from the Sundance Film Festival. It was my first time ever there.
So, the movie! I've decided to give my little review. I'll start by saying it WAS an overall good movie. Definetly something worth seeing and something worth getting awards. It's weird because I found the book really hard at points to understand, but the movie was very easy to get. To be honest, the acting in it wasn't really excellent in my opinion, but it was good enough. Dustin was in a good number of scenes and so was his son.
I don't know how to tell you anything else without giving things away, so below are
SPOILERS: Dustin's character Izzy is somewhat like Bernard Focker. Almost JUST like him. He tells inappropriate jokes, often talks about sex, is open about being Jewish, and has that same fatherly love for Barney as he does for Gaylord (Ben Stiller). The difference about his relationship with that though is, while Greg was really embarressed by his father, Barney seems to embrace him. One scene is when Barney's father-in-law tells the bartender at the wedding not to serve Barney's father any more drinks, Barney comfronts him and tells him not to tell his father what to do. The father and son relationship is really explored between the two characters, whenever in fact they are on screen.
Dustin's scenes include (In order of which they appear):
- When he and Barney are going to Barney's second wife's house for dinner
When he goes to Barney's Wedding
When him and Barney met in a bar
When he arrives as Barney is being beat up by a cop
When he is at Barney's third wedding
When he and Barney are sitting in lounge chairs watching Barney's family
When he and Barney go to the cemetary
When he eventually dies (Just his body is shown, no dialogue from him)
Now, if I'm right, those are all his scenes. I don't think I'm forgetting much. So he's in 8 scenes total.
I also wanted to mention Jake's scenes. To be honest, he's not in it TOO much. If I had to estimate, possibly 5-7 minutes total.
One more interesting fact I wanted to mention is when Barney is going to met Miriam (The third lady) for lunch, Barney is nervous and has a list of Topic Starters. The first one written down is
All The Presidents Men. Maybe this meant the book or movie? Anyhow, it was just really funny that a Dustin Hoffman movie was MENTIONED in a Dustin Hoffman movie. Look out for that.