Totally charming, but unbalanced, dramatically. Although written for film, the writing was quite playlike - I could perceive when one of the characters was Starting a Monologue, and the back-and-forth almost always felt rehearsed and repeatable. Nevertheless, I'll recommend this movie more generally than for most other movies I'm watching for this project; it's a sweetheart.
The story is cobbled from a few different places: The More the Merrier supplies forcing a man and a woman who are strangers to each other to live in an apartment together, and every romance ever supplies the odd couple who can't stand each other at first falling gradually in love. The romantic predictability doesn't really take away from enjoying the movie, but the first half has a different feel than the second. It's kind of a chaotic, episodic comedy at first, and then it settles into really familiar romantic territory and its confidence, and thus enjoyability, picks up. I object to the abruptness with which the romance happens, like the script just decided it was time for them to fall in love without any prior clues or evidence, but the results are delightful enough that I don't quite care.
Richard Dreyfuss won the Best Actor Oscar this year for this part. Winning for comedic performances has become vanishingly rare in the last half-century, and this role is a perfect example of why that's a shame. It's a completely winning performance, perfectly using Dreyfuss's particular energy and charisma, with a little room for serious moments. He's dynamite in it.
As I felt with Audrey Rose, I less liked Marsha Mason than I did sympathize with her and wish her well. I don't know how to explain this reaction; she's an actor doing her job and I shouldn't condescend like that. Another actress I've felt this way about is Kim Novak - this sense of a ceiling, as if she's in over her head carrying a major part and should stay in supporting roles, in which she'd be far better, instead of seeming overstretched and mediocre. I compare Mason in Goodbye Girl with Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, roles with similar ranges and sorta similar situations. The possibilities with Burstyn felt endless, as if she could make me believe anything at all. With Mason I felt like she wasn't going to do anything unexpected, just what the script says, and it would be fine but not especially interesting.
Anyway. One of the better mainstream movies of this year. It's a surprise to me that Herbert Ross, otherwise a middling figure, directed two grand slams in the same year - this and The Turning Point, very very different but both surprisingly memorable middlebrow entertainment. Both are almost James L. Brooks-level movies. Almost.
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