Amazon.com video review:
The Goodbye Girl is a bittersweet comedy about
relationships and taking chances. Though it deals with the human
condition, what most quickly comes to mind are those wickedly comedic
scenes featuring Richard Dreyfuss in an Oscar-winning role. He plays a
struggling actor with a sharp tongue who has sublet an apartment from
single mom Marcia Mason, a divorcée with horrific taste in men, who
are always running out on her. She is left high and dry once more,
stuck sharing her apartment with Dreyfuss when he hasn't the heart to
enforce his lease and toss out mother and daughter.
Neil Simon's play shines under the direction of Herbert Ross as these
two mismatched people find their contempt changing into mutual
admiration. Quinn Cummings is more interesting than most precocious
child stars; she seems brighter and her manner is prickly instead of
cloying. Watch this film just for the scene in which Dreyfuss plays Richard III in an
off-off-Broadway play. He lisps, he limps, he screams. It is the worst
theater you will ever see--and thoroughly hilarious. --Rochelle
O'Gorman
