Best movie of this year hands down!

As Good As It Gets

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I just watched GOODBYE CHARLIE this morning and had to write a review about it. I think the greatest problem I have with the film is the way it seems purposely gay then at the last minute chickens out. The cop-out ending is truly problematic and undermines everything that came earlier in the story.I have not seen the stage play or read it. But my guess is the play did not end the way the movie did. I am thinking Fox decided to tack on the phony ending to ensure its commercial success and make it seem less gay by the final fadeout. Spoilers ahead for those who have not seen it yet.This story (based on George Axelrod's play) seems inspired by Thorne Smith's gender switching comedy TURNABOUT which was already filmed in 1940. In GOODBYE CHARLIE, the leading man (Tony Curtis) has realized he's developed feelings for the "girl" (Debbie Reynolds) who is his old skirt-chasing pal Charlie now reincarnated. At one point in the story, Reynolds' character realizes this is a karmic justice of sorts-- and Curtis says she's gone from being a pitcher to a catcher. Clearly, a reference to the versatility of gay sex.However, in order to give the audience a more mainstream happy ending, Charlene as she's now called, falls to her death again then Tony's character says it is probably for the best. A short time later, another woman out for a stroll along the beach comes up to the house and she's also played by Debbie Reynolds. She looks exactly like Charlie/Charlene, and when it's discovered she's single, we're led to believe these two will wind up together. A point in the dialogue is made that the new woman at the end has always been a girl, never a boy. Nothing has properly foreshadowed the tacked on resolution. It totally comes out of left field. A silly compromise is even included where the woman has a Great Dane that is named Charlie.Overall, I think this is a disappointing film that until the last five minutes had a lot going for it. There's even a nice subplot with a rich mama's boy (Pat Boone) who falls for Charlene and proposes marriage. She turns him down, but that can be read as the young man being really attracted to another man, which is just dropped when the engagement falls through. Given all Axelrod's humor about the sexes and clever use of reverse psychology, the story has/had great potential to show that love comes in all forms. But such a wonderful lesson is abruptly discarded so that the film can have a completely heterosexual finale. I can't help but think it would have been made more correctly in Europe. It truly deserved an ambiguous ending that made us think about the real nature of bonding, friendship and love.

I'm still wondering why Lauren Bacall who played the title role of Goodbye Charlie on Broadway was not cast in the film. The story concerns a man who was both shot and drowned at sea, one Charlie Sorel who comes back as a woman and starts haunting the people she knew in her former life as a he. Bacall's voice in the lower registers as it were probably added a dimension to the performance on stage that could never be appreciated by the screen audience.Charlie was a real cad in life and now coming back as a the beautiful Debbie Reynolds is truly some bad karma coming home to roost. The only one who knows the secret is best friend and fellow writer Tony Curtis who flew in from Biarritz to both be executor of an estate in debt and to preside over a sparsely attended memorial service.In her recent memoir Debbie Reynolds who had worked with Tony Curtis in The Rat Race and had no problems said that Curtis had now taken the side of buddy Eddie Fisher in the breakup of the Fisher/Reynolds wedding. He quoted Eddie and said that she was obviously a lesbian as Fisher's manly charms she eventually found resistible. That set the tone for their relationship off screen.On the other hand Curtis in his memoirs talked about director Vincente Minnelli whom he found super meticulous in his work. Sad to say that Goodbye Charlie though it has some good moments will never be ranked as one of the great films for Curtis, Reynolds, or Minnelli.

I am going to give this lousy movie a "6", mostly due to the acting of Debbie Reynolds, Tony Curtis, and (best of all) Walter Matthau in trying to lift the idiotic plot. Also it's a nod to Vincent Minelli, a director who when good is indeed good - but not here.I have nothing against sex in comedy: they go hand in hand ever since Aristophanes wrote LYSISTRATA. George Axelrod was no Aristophanes (he would barely touch that master's knees). However, he could construct plays of interest (THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH) and he had a hand in the screenplays of a number of first rate film (Wilder's version of THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962 version)). But this film is crap. The story should be more promising: Charlie is the friend of fellow writer George (Tony Curtis), and both are ladies men. While on the yacht of Hollywood producer Sir Leopold Sartori (Matthau) he makes a play for Lady Rusty Sartori (Laura Devon), and is caught by the husband. What follows may be based on the popular idea of the fate of film producer Thomas Ince in 1924 on William Randolph Hearst's yacht. Charlie is shot dead jumping overboard. His body is not recovered. Friend George is supposed to handle the funeral. Only a few people show up - Charlie's sex escapades and his debts left him with few friends. George finds he has been left executor of a bankrupt and debt encrusted estate, and he can't do anything to fix it.Shortly after all the mourners leave, and after George falls asleep, his doorbell is knocked on. He finds a young man named Bruce Minton III (Pat Boone) with a woman who seems to be in shock. The woman is Debbie Reynolds, whom Minton found wondering around the highway naked and dazed. Minton does put her into his coat, but deposits her (out of necessity - for want of any sensible explanation) with an outraged George. George allows her to spend the night, but the next day she suddenly reveals that she is the dead Charlie, cruelly reincarnated as a woman (albeit an attractive woman). When George finally realizes this he tries to help Charlie get back to normal. But Charlie has other ideas. Like blackmailing old girlfriends and romancing every man in Hollywood - starting with Sir Leopold, whom he/she owes a "favor" to.That is the foundation of this story. There have been attempts to do justice to reincarnation stories, but this is hardly the best attempt. Axelrod basically gets his best jabs when the female Charlie keeps acting too masculine (he/she slaps the rear of a female employee of the beauty parlor he/she is attending). That Charlie and George inevitably start falling for each other (despite their mutual realization of how sick the situation is) is inevitable, but it too is not funny.Still, as I said, the leads and some of the supporting actors (including an up-and-coming Ellen Burstyn) give a good try for it. Best is Matthau, who (despite a poor Hungarian accent) does well as Sir Leopold (a film clone of the real English movie producer/mogul, Sir Alexander Korda, who was married to the gorgeous Merle Oberon for many years). He is childish, monstrous, and inept in trying to be smooth at the same time. But this material is lousy, and it is a monument to Matthau's ability that he pushes it as far as he can. Reynolds is too shrill at times at the transformation she has suffered, and is best as the poisonous blackmailer/user. Curtis is fine, but has few moments to rise in the material given him. Boone does well, but he has little to do but look like a love-sick puppy dog towards Reynolds.See it once for the cast and Minelli, and then never watch it again if you can avoid it.

This is one of those movies that is fun to watch, the premise is of course impossible, but enjoyable none the less. If you liked THE LAST TIME I SAW ARCHIE or MERRILY WE LIVE you will be very pleased that you took the time to check out this gem. Tony Curtis and Debby Reynolds well, they live up to their comedic potential in this one.