| Director | Richard J. Lewis |
|---|---|
| Budget | $30 million |
| Box office | $12.1 million |
Barney Panofsky is living with his best friend Boogie in Rome. He marries the mentally disturbed and unfaithful Clara Charnofsky after she tells him she is pregnant with his child. He finds out the child — delivered stillborn — is not his, and he demands they separate. She commits suicide, and a devastated Barney decides to return home to Montreal.
Barney soon meets the woman who becomes his second wife, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family. At their lavish wedding, Barney meets Miriam Grant and immediately falls in love. He tells her his feelings for her that night, but she rejects him.
Despite his marriage, Barney sends flowers and gifts to Miriam. He later picks up Boogie, who comes to detox for a few days at Barney's lake house. He walks in on Boogie in bed with his wife. Initially overjoyed that he has an excuse to divorce her and pursue Miriam, he later questions Boogie's integrity. The drunk men argue, and Barney shoots two bullets from his gun to dissuade Boogie from snorkeling, one into the air, before he trips and passes out on the dock, and Boogie falls backwards into the lake.
When Barney awakens, Boogie is missing. A detective tries to beat a confession out of him until his father, Izzy, intervenes. Barney continues to believe that Boogie ran away, and holds out hope that he will reappear.
With his divorce final, Barney asks Miriam on a date. He travels to New York City to meet her and finally begin a relationship. They marry and have two children, and Barney gets a job producing a television series. Izzy dies in a brothel, causing Barney to laugh and cry and call his father a "King". Barney and Miriam live happily until, on another vacation to the lake house, Barney meets Blair, who works in radio, Miriam's old line of work. There is an immediate platonic connection between Blair and Miriam, much to Barney's noticeable consternation.
After Barney and Miriam's son, Michael, leaves home, Miriam informs Barney of her intention to return to work. He attempts to dissuade her, but she persists and secures employment, thanks to support from Blair. Miriam begins work at a radio station, but Barney misses her first on-air interview — because he "was drunk and watching the hockey game, like has happened a thousand times before" — and is rude and dismissive to Miriam's colleagues.
Miriam remains steadfastly faithful to him, but eventually, his picaresque behavior results in her taking a weeklong visit to Michael's place in New York. While she is absent, Barney gets drunk at a bar and goes to bed with a former actress on his show. He tells Miriam about his infidelity, and they divorce. She soon marries Blair.
Barney, who has been displaying small signs of a deteriorating memory (forgetting where he left his car on two occasions), begins to show signs of an acute but unspecified memory loss. After Boogie's body is discovered near the lake house, dead from an apparent sky diving accident, Miriam meets Barney for lunch and offers to help as a friend.
When Miriam returns from the bathroom, Barney has paid for the meal but forgotten his wallet. She follows him, and, by the time she catches up to him, he has forgotten that they were divorced. He speaks to her as if it were years earlier, assuming that they're still married and that their children are quite young.
Barney's condition worsens until his death. While his children are helping to settle some of his affairs at the lake house, they observe a "water bomber" plane scoop up water from the lake and dump it on a fire on the mountainside, showing the children what could have happened to Boogie, referencing an urban myth. The final scene shows Miriam visiting Barney's grave, leaving roses at a tombstone bearing both of their names.