I recently saw THE GOODBYE GIRL for the first time after having been familiar with the material only via the musical.
As you say, it's a good movie, but I was amazed that it had been showered with Oscar love that year. It just doesn't seem like that kind of movie. In addition to Dreyfuss' win for Best Actor, this movie was nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay for Neil Simon, Best Actress for Marsha Mason, and Best Supporting Actress for Quinn Cummings.
This is a pleasant enough slice of 1970's romantic comedy, but I didn't see much that I thought was special about it.
I was talking about this with a friend and he told me that, in addition to being a huge hit, Neil Simon was the hottest writer around at the time and that anything associated with him was granted a degree of attention that wasn't always merited by the work itself, especially in hindsight. One example he used was to point out that Marsha Mason's film career basically tanked as soon as she and Simon divorced. That tracks with my experience as I often feel that little of Simon's work, no matter how big a hit in its time, holds up to contemporary viewing. |
