Watch Looking for Mr. Goodbar For Free

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Brilliant and touching

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Diane Keaton is excellent, playing the protagonist Theresa Dunn, a teacher who loves having casual sex and taking drugs. She hooks up with a variety of men, some of them dangerous.This film is based on a novel about a real-life NYC teacher, Roseann Quinn.

I'd been looking for this movie years. Sure, I think it's just as funny as the next guy that a movie called "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" is itself hard to find . . . but in any event, to the dear sir or madam that recently uploaded this to YouTube, my sincerest thanks.It took me a few hours after the credits rolled to fully come to grips with the movie, but I do like it. And it's absolutely worthy of anyone's time for Diane Keaton's performance, alone. It's actually chock-full of familiar faces, but all of this rides on her. Keaton's hedonistic character is layered, playful, sometimes surprisingly naive, but she commands your attention. And a lot of the shock here derives from her career as a school teacher with her nights spent perusing the seedy nightlife. But she's very sympathetic in the classroom, particularly her scenes with Amy, her less-fortunate student (compassion blooms herein).***SPOILERS*** It's the ending I had trouble processing., because it does leave an empty feeling. But it is also a genuine shock - the kind you don't see every day, and surprising for a 40 year-old movie that does aim to unnerve. You think it's Richard Gere who'll be bringing about the tragic ending, but oh no . . . it's something else entirely. It's tricky for a movie to still awe like this after so many intervening (not to mention desensitizing) years, but go ahead: try to get that closing image out of your head. Not as easy as you'd think and that's saying something.7/10

Directed by Richard Brooks, "Looking for Mr Goodbar" stars Diane Keaton as Theresa Dunn, a school teacher who seems prim and proper by day, but has clandestine sexual encounters with men by night. Brooks offers a number of trite explanations for Theresa's obsession with sex, but only one is interesting; as she suffered from Polio as a kid, Theresa believes that she is unable to give birth to a healthy child. Denied motherhood, she thus embarks on a kind of hedonistic night-life. When it was released 1977, many viewed "Looking for Mr Goodbar" as a supremely reactionary film. This is a flick about sexually liberated women who turn their backs to Catholic and conservative values, have lots of sex and are then beaten and stabbed to death by men. Gay men, meanwhile, are portrayed as sexually confused brutes who stab women as a means of assuaging their impotency around women. The supposed message: don't sleep around and stay away from crazy gays!Indeed, upon release, a number of Catholic priests praised "Looking For Mr Goodbar" and took out newspaper spreads promoting the film. To believers, "Goodbar" was touted as a "stern warning!" Brooks himself structures the film as a descent into hell, Theresa's basement apartment becoming increasingly dark and dingy as the film progresses. The film then ends with Theresa being killed in the shadows, Brooks focusing on a creepy freeze-frame of her darkness shrouded dead face. It's like an image out of "The Exorcist".But whilst "Goodbar" may be reactionary in some regards, Brooks also complicates things. His male characters are uniformly violent/disgusting and several sequences seem designed to bash conservative America (see Brooks' masterpiece, "Elmer Gantry"). The film seems less like a condemnation of the sexual revolution, than a nihilistic repudiation of everything, including sex; any of the men Theresa encounters could be killers.Elsewhere the film undermines anyone who might embody a traditional normality. University professors cheat on their wives and exploit female students, Theresa's own family unit is fractured, sustained by repressive illusion, and her father is a brute. Meanwhile, the men Theresa sleeps with dance with phallic switchblades or are ignorant of her needs. The film's gay murderer is himself not "crazy because he is gay", but because social forces won't allow him to be gay (he juggles a wife and an offensively portrayed, stereotypical gay lover). Theresa also echoes the gay character in complex ways. She is excluded from a normal life because of a hereditary disease, and is the victim of a society that assigns people fixed roles, imposing on them notions of what a "real man" or "real woman" should be. For Brooks, normality seems like a ideological construct, and violence arises more out of a cultural situation than individual responsibility. Complicating things further, the film's "love scenes" are shot to emphasise Theresa's pleasure and the bars she frequents are positively portrayed, and not hive's of debauchery.Regardless of the film's message, "Looking for Mr Goodbar" is a dull, repetitive film. It features a number of jarring flashback/fantasy sequences, is sensationalistic, flaunts its grime, is overly proud of its sleazier elements and wastes a strong performance by Diane Keaton.6/10 - Worth one viewing.

I saw "Mr. Goodbar" at a film festival screening, several years after it's initial release. In some ways (none of them good), this movie has haunted me ever since. I can still recall feeling strangely perturbed and confused as the film neared it's final minutes. I guess I expected that the ending would somehow magically bring the preceding grimy and occasionally chaotic events into some sort of focus.All I got from that ending was a brutal stomach ache similar to the lingering pain induced by a cheap sucker punch to the gut. I will readily admit to having gained no further understanding or insight into this film over the years. I still can't imagine why anyone would make a film like this, or what possible value or entertainment viewers derived from it.For me, Diane Keaton's performance is the only thing in the movie that keeps it from getting the lowest vote. That she managed to project some warmth and humanity from such a crudely drawn, relentlessly sad, and gratuitously self-destructive character, only made the ending that much more horrific and senseless. It's easily one of the worst experiences I've ever had in a movie theater.