Watch Goodbye Charlie For Free

Sorry, this movie sucks

good back-story, and good acting

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The first must-see film of the year.

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.

When the film begins, a notorious womanizer, Charlie, is caught with another man's wife and is shot to death. Soon there's a funeral and his friend, George (Tony Curtis) arrives to do the eulogy. However, almost no one shows up...because Charlie spent his life using people, not paying debts and bedding any woman who fell for his spiel. Good riddance seems to be the mood of the day.Soon there's a knock on the door to Charlie's home and since George is the executor, he answers. A young man (Pat Boone) is there with a naked woman in a blanket. He isn't sure who she is but she gave this address but was otherwise delirious. When she later awakens, it becomes obvious that this IS Charlie--reincarnated as a woman (Debbie Reynolds). At first, it's pretty obvious that Charlie had nothing but contempt for women and hates his new body. However, soon an interesting change comes over him. Perhaps he can use and take advantage of people BETTER as a woman and Charlie begins using her wiles to get ahead in life. She shamelessly flirts and blackmails some of the rich married women Charlie used to sleep with in his male days. Why George hangs out with Charlie throughout much of the film is odd, as George doesn't seem like a total jerk. Charlie, on the other hand, is gosh-darn awful both as a man and as a woman.So what you have is a racy 60s sex comedy...minus the sex. The idea is pretty cute, original and I generally enjoyed the movie. However, I did think the film went on a bit too long and the picture lost a bit of its momentum as a result. For the first half, I'd give this one a 7 or 8...for the final half, a 4 or 5.By the way, Walter Matthau's accent was just awful and I assume he must have been really embarrassed by this performance.

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 saw this movie for the first time over twenty years ago but could never remember the title. I saw it again on AMC and recognized it immediately, but my memories of it have strayed quite a bit from what I thought it was. In fact, this movie takes an amusing idea, a man in a woman's body, throws in some funny lines, but misses the point and goes no where. Tony Curtis plays a very funny straight man to Debbie Reynolds, and while she may have been attractive for the time, the outdated values and generation gap haven't exactly endeared this movie to a whole new generation. While still more enjoyable than it's recent re-make, "Switch" with Ellen Barkin and Jimmy Smits, the movie almost immediately drags after the opening sequences and sets up a premise that really goes nowhere. Pat Boone's role is seemingly tagged on as is Roger C. Carmel's, but Walter Matthau is nearly unrecognizable as a worldly skirt-chaser giving Reynolds something to run from. While I can't in good conscience give this a ten, the movie is worth while a look as a seven.