Fresh and Exciting

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

NO,it's not "the killing fields" .It 's a thriller which verges on parody,and the unexpected twists come at such a speed it's not always easy to follow the plot.The cast is perfect :Patricia Arquette is marvelous as a sexy blonde ,who listens to Julie Andrews ("I mistrust people over 10 who still listen to "the sound of music" " says cop Rita);but the stand out is ,IMHO,her colleague ,the cop Ray Mc Kinnon ,and his fortune cookies philosophy ;"His "I arrest you" is priceless and he delivers the last line with such a naivety he almost makes me think of Joe Brown's "nobody's perfect" .Another hilarious scene shows Arquette and Johnson making love in a church to the sound of sacred music and getting an ovation. (for the music ,needless to say)

I confess, I bought the movie because my best friend, Porfirio Mojica, performed the soundtrack at the point where Don Johnson is playing the keyboards in the organ loft. This particular scene (a love scene with Patricia Arquette) is pretty steamy, I admit. Saint Mathew Passion, I believe, is the piece they used. I recognize Pro's (our nickname for Porfirio) style because I grew up listening to him play. Unfortunately, he was not mentioned in the credits because he is not a member of the Screen Actors Guild. Porfirio still performs and teaches music at Mount San Antonio Community College (MTSACC) in Walnut, California. I watch the movie from time to time to hear him in the soundtrack, but I give the movie itself an average rating of 6 out of 10.

I'm not a fan of Ellen DeGeneris, but she was pretty darn good in this, really the highlight of the film. While there were too many twists and turns and the ending was a pretty ho-hum, it was interesting enough to keep your interest. Vincent Gallo has a pretty cool cameo and there were just as many plot twists that were unpredictable as there were ones that were obvious. I really don't have much more to say, but there is a ten line minimum so i will just keep typing until i have ten lines, you can stop reading, i'm just typing to get to ten lines, really not saying anything to this point, just trying to get to ten lines.

"Goodbye Lover" is a quite good dark comedy about -- as Jake Dunmore says quoting his brother Ben -- "Image is everything." Everything in this movie is about image, and yet nothing is at it appears. And in this respect the very context of the movie sustains the content exceedingly well: it's a beautifully shot movie -- too pretty, in fact. So pretty it's easy to miss the fetidness just beneath the surface.Almost every shot is too shiny, too glossy, too seamless, too meticulously composed. Many scenes are suffused with those ubiquitous cinematic blues and oranges contemporary DPs and directors like so much, but raised to such a degree that it almost enters the realm of the fanciful. Many other scenes are done in hi-tech blacks, whites, and grays. Everything is window dressing -- reality is nothing more than appearance, beautifully symbolized by mirrors everywhere. Lots of mirrors, shiny surfaces, glass & windows, all reflecting everyone to everyone else, a world of appearances without substance, without soul. And when people aren't being reflected in mirrors they're being framed behind glass, a diorama for display. The world is just one big department store window.Yet just as a structurally crumbling, termite-ridden house can be painted to look pristine and beautiful, so does this shiny veneer hide the most vicious, rapacious, cynical behavior. Indeed, the world in which this takes place may look beautiful, but it is very very empty and ugly. And as such this is a kind of morality tale that shows the dangers to a society that lives strictly for appearance.There are few movies I can think of which so excellently explore this tense boundary between the shiny packaging, and the rancid stuff it hides. As Ben Dunmore says, "People worry that it's a dangerous and sh*tty world. And it is our job to make it look safe and clean." Thus our hero works at a PR firm, packaging a morally bankrupt politician as a wholesome, devout family man; the president of the PR firm pretends to be a holy man -- a rather inherent contradiction; our two principals work in a church that obviously serves Mammon over anything else: religion is just another accoutrement, something to accessorize the soul; and then there's the wedding chapel in Las Vegas, where an unctuous smile sells ersatz sincerity. [Sorry.] Etc. (In fact, it's surprising how many such examples of this there are in the movie -- the writers were very inventive and consistent in coming up with such a profusion of image vs substance motifs.)The only person in this world of appearances who doesn't belong, Detective Rollins, is a "F*cking Mook" -- as his partner, Sergeant Rita Pompano (Ellen Degeneres), calls him. For him, appearance *is* reality. His sincerity is regarded with mocking disbelief by everybody: he obviously doesn't understand the rules of the game that everyone else is playing. Even we, the audience, take sides against him -- that's how subtly subversive and well presented -- even seductive -- this world is.And speaking of Ellen Degeneres, she is great in this movie. Others complain that she isn't funny or witty, merely insulting. But in one of those delightful twists where the line between fiction and reality dissolves, this is her payback for the flack she took from the forces of christian oppression after she came out of the closet. Ellen obviously relishes this role -- she mercilessly mocks her Mormon partner, gets to be a "guy" (and, for an attractive woman, she is laudably unattractive in this role), and, at the end of the movie, looks ridiculous when she dresses in "drag".This may also be Don Johnson's best movie. For once he gets to play the kind of character he seems uniquely equipped to play: a high-end used car salesman, all style, all flash, sexy in his way, but empty and sleazy. It's very fitting that when he says he's "trying to get something real in his life", he unknowingly gets quite the opposite. And, since he wants to leave the game, he no longer belongs in this world -- and is appropriately removed from the game.Sometimes the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed ("Go For It" billboard), as is the writing ("You need to go down on your knees for her." "Well, someone obviously did."). But it's all in good spirits, and I'm willing to accept its blemishes (as it were) 'cause it succeeds admirably in most other respects. And the acting in general is uniformly solid -- in fact, it's very well cast, even the curiously unfatale femme fatale Patricia Arquette.The movie ends on a wonderfully humorous note to the tune of "Climb Every Mountain" as image thoroughly triumphs over substance, much as it does in real life -- which may be the reason this movie doesn't sit well with many people.The filmmakers obviously had fun making this movie, and it shows. All in all, it's a very well-made, fun movie -- if you scratch its surface. [8/10]