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Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
12/16
12/16:
Based on the real-life case of a female schoolteacher who was murdered in 1973, Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a disjointed
mess with many repetitions, but the point has been made.
It's pretty much Diane Keaton's movie, and she gives a realistic performance. Her character, Theresa, tries to be part
of the times by getting involved with the bar scene, making a clumsy mistake here and there without being careful about
herself, and letting strange men come and go through her apartment.
In progression, every man is worse than the last. The final one turns out to be the worst of them all, costing her life
in an unforgettable bizarre rape-murder scene. At the same time, her drug use and appetite for sex spiral out of control.
It's easy to feel bad for Theresa, who shows symptoms of a borderline personality disorder, because she's the type
who can do a lot better by being with somebody who's at least decent. Really, there's no reason for her to consume drugs.
Checking out Diane Keaton's signs, they're accurate in two ways. When Theresa was learning ASL,
she showed beginner's mistakes which were either far off where the hands should be at or not technically correct. When she
worked as a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing, her signs turned out to be correct. However, Theresa isn't a
good interpreter and thus needs more training. No matter what, it's an excellent job overall.
Tuesday Weld secures the only Oscar nomination (it should've gone to Diane Keaton who actually won the award during the same
year for her performance in Annie Hall) of her career by playing Theresa's sister. She's okay, playing a secondary
character who goes through the motions. LeVar Burton, who's famous as Kunta Kinte in
Roots, makes his
screen debut. The same goes for Brian Dennehy when I thought he had been acting for a long time up hitherto.
However, he wouldn't be popular yet until First Blood came along.
It's safe to say that Richard Gere and Tom Berenger launched their careers based on their work here. Both are good. The former
will do the exact same thing in Breathless. It's certainly different league for the latter, so I'm surprised. He
would later admit playing Gary gave him nightmares. By the way, when Richard Gere's character mentioned to Theresa
that he saw The Godfather and that he liked Al Pacino's performance, Diane Keaton was actually in it and had a
relationship with Al Pacino. Talk about feeling stupid.
All in all, Looking for Mr. Goodbar pre-dates the AIDS epidemic and shows how dangerous, especially for the females,
bar-hopping can be while under the influence.