The Goodbye Girl (1977)

The Goodbye Girl
Directed by Herbert Ross
Written by Neil Simon
1977/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Paula McFadden: Be tactful.
Lucy McFadden: What’s that?
Paula McFadden: Lie!

This Neil Simon romcom has not aged well.

Paula McFadden (Marsha Mason) is the single mother of a precocious ten-year-old girl, Lucy (Quinn Cummings).  The girl’s father was an actor and so is the man she is currently living with.  Everyone is excited about moving to California where the boyfriend is scheduled to make a movie.  At the last minute, boyfriend leaves Paula via a Dear John letter.  To add insult to injury, he has sublet their apartment and Paula has no money and nowhere else to live.  She determines to stand her ground.

The sub-lessee turns out to be Elliot Garfield (Richard Dreyfuss) who has moved to New York to star in an off-Broadway production of Richard III.  He has nowhere else to go either.  After a huge bruhaha, Elliot offers to let Paula and Lucy stay.  Paula and Elliot make lousy roommates.  He is a health-food-eating, meditating, midnight guitar playing bundle of nerves.  She is a heartbroken actor-hating dancer who retired and is now out of shape. But Elliot and Lucy adore each other so there is that.

Romcom is the genre and there will be no surprise ending.

I am not a fan of Marsha Mason and Neil Simon is hit or miss with me.  I laughed really hard at Dreyfuss’s performance on original release and it is still the best part of the movie. He is required by the Richard III director to play the hunchbacked villain as a flaming queen  despite Elliot’s pleas that this will ruin his career.  He attempts this any way with hilarious results.  Everything else felt too talky and pat on this viewing.  I don’t know that a movie would be able to get away with such outrageous gay stereotyping these days.

Dreyfuss won the Best Actor Oscar.  I would have been more inclined to honor him for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress,  Best Supporting Actress (Cummings), and Best Original Screenplay.