Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Writer/Director Denys Arcand gives us a film that dispels the myth that we will all die a happy death. Remy's son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau) lives in London and doesn't have anything to do with his father, who rejects him because of his capitalist ways, but he comes in and gets things done for his father. The Canadian hospital and the unions are not presented in a good light. Sebastian has to grease palms with money everywhere he turns. He also calls his father's old friends and associates to get them to visit. It really gets funny when he naively goes to the police to find a source for heroin as the morphine is no longer working to alleviate his father's pain. It is not only the Canadian health care system that is pilloried, but the Catholic Church, and the imperialism of many nations. It is truly a thinking person's film. There are so many great lines throughout and some great thoughts on life and death. While Nathalie (Marie-Josée Croze) helped him ease into death, his friends relieved their youth around him. He lived his life on his own terms, and he went out that way. I want more Denys Arcand.

The Barbarians in this film are many things: you hear the phrase from a man describing 9/11 in the context of a larger world view, as though it were the first time the Roman Empire had been invaded on its home soil by Barbarians, and it is akin to that (a lesser power connecting on a punch against a greater power, killing it through sheer will and patience) that steers the narrative in this work by French-Canadien Denys Arcand, a sequel to "Decline of the American Empire." An intellectual, who spent his life basically doing whatever he wanted, is dying of cancer. He's an idealist, a socialist, who despises what his son does for a living (his son is a capitalist). As a socialist, he should die in a bed in a public hospital surrounded by people he doesn't know... no, of course not, he should die at his home surrounded by people he loves, but he never cultivated those relationships to the extent that anyone feels a great need to be there for him in his dying hours. His son, persuaded by the one woman who loves him enough to do something for him (his estranged wife), pays them to be there for him, pays an old family friend with connections to narcotics to feed him heroine, pays former students to come pay him a visit and validate his lectures. In each case, this ironic twist (all these socialists are such whores... they don't want to be there for each other, but they all have a price)... this ironic twist feeds into the film, until the money fades into shadow and you don't even consider it anymore. All of the great ideas these intellectuals have, these 'isms'... his son's fiancée explains how ridiculous 'love' is as a reason for being with someone (her own parents divorced when she was three)... yet, she feels jealousy when the family friend is around, a stunningly beautiful woman you could never really be with due to her drug problems. Everyone in this movie is afraid of their feelings... and by the end of the movie they've essentially been paid to feel... well, everyone except the man with the money, the son, the "prince of the barbarians"... who is doing everything out of love for his mother... in the beginning...This film is like paint being mixed, then applied to a dry canvas, then transformed into a beautiful twilight shot of a lake, and dear friends, and a life well lived... somehow, in spite of itself.

A dying man is surrounded by friends and his estranged son. There isn't much of a plot here, with much time devoted to the mundane actions taken by the son to make sure his father's final days are comfortable. The viewer is supposed to be drawn into the philosophical blabbering of the characters. While they talk a lot, they don't say much that is interesting. One would expect the dying man to have some profound thoughts, but he is rather shallow and self-centered. His son, a millionaire, does little more than bribe people. The film tends to go off on tangents involving minor characters. It eventually becomes tedious, and one wishes the old man would just die so the film can end.

I had no idea what this movie was about prior to renting it. And I almost turned it off upon discovering it was in French! But I am truly glad I persevered. Sebastien, the capitalistically successful son of a socialistic philandering failed professor, invades the pathetic socialized medicine system of his Canadian homeland by cutting through all the bureaucratic crap with good intentions and cold cash.Clearly, those reviewers here who say that right-wingers will hate this movie are 180 degrees off. It clearly demonstrates the ineptitude, failure, and easy corruptibility of the socialist leftist system and denizens thereof.This well-acted, beautifully photographed story confronts a host of controversial issues, from socialized medicine, to illegal drugs, to father-son estrangement, concepts and fear of death, to intellectual snobbery, adultery, and even euthanasia! Definitely must see for the lover of intelligent and literate and subtle comedy-drama. It only failed to get that tenth star because it is so laid back and slick in its approach, it may fail to excite.