Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Goodbye Girl

A dancer (Marsha Mason) living with her precocious daughter (Quinn Cummings) finds her latest boyfriend flying the coop and subletting their apartment to an obnoxious, ego inflated actor (Richard Dreyfuss) who has just scored the lead in a bizarre, homosexual rendition of Richard III in an "off-off-off" Broadway production. The Goodbye Girl was extremely successful in its day, but is a typically schmaltzy Neil Simon work, replete with constant one-liners hitting their mark approximately less than 10% of the time. Dreyfuss, who surprisingly won the Oscar for his performance, is awfully irritating (though his theater scenes are a hoot) as are Mason and Cummings, who also bafflingly garnered much praise for their work.