Looking for Mr. Goodbar [VHS]

Looking for Mr. Goodbar [VHS]
by Richard Brooks

Looking for Mr. Goodbar [VHS]

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Category: VHS Video
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Product details

Actor: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Richard Kiley, Tuesday Weld, William Atherton
Director: Richard Brooks
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 136 minutes
Release Date: 1997-05-06
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Paramount Home Video
Studio: Paramount Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of Looking for Mr. Goodbar [VHS]

Movie Review: Looking for spoilers?
Summary: 4 Stars

There are plenty of reviews that don't have spoilers; I'll write one that does. This film is based on the novel which is based on the real-life murder of a New York teacher of deaf children.

Theresa Dunn is a dedicated, talented, compassionate, and much-loved teacher by day. She's a "good" Catholic girl who gets caught up in the freedom and excitement of the sixties and seventies. Theresa's first sexual awakening comes in the form of an affair with a married professor. This is where the film is perhaps most ambivalent and unsure. While Theresa is wise enough not to fall in love with the professor, knowing that he will never leave his wife, she still becomes attached and desires a "nice and normal" relationship. She is faithful to him and asks why he doesn't like to talk and touch after making love. She often asks him if there is anything she can do to make him happier. After the school term is over he leaves her, and Theresa suddenly changes. She becomes a barhopper who picks up "bad" men (uneducated, drug-using, promiscuous, criminal, violent), only wanting casual sex with these men without any emotional attachments. What caused this sudden change? This movie is all over the place about what caused it, and maybe it's meant to be a combination of causes? I was left guessing as to why Theresa became not just promiscuous but also self-destructive.

We are shown scenes of Theresa's repressive Catholic father. Does the repressed Catholic saint by day become an irrepressible sinner and self-flagellator at night? There are hints that Theresa's life as a teacher of young children is rewarding but not exciting. We are given glimpses of Theresa's active imaginary fantasy life. We are shown the physical and mental scars left by her childhood struggle with polio. And, of course, Theresa is in the midst of a sex, drug, and feminist revolution. I suppose that any or all of these things can lead someone to promiscuity and self-destructive behavior. But the problem I have is that I don't understand what changes Theresa from a person who cares to a person who doesn't care: from a person who washes her dishes to someone who lives in filth. We only see what Theresa does, but other than her fantasies, we don't get to see her thoughts and feelings. There is no other character to which Theresa opens up and expresses herself.

All the men in this story - even the "good" ones - are bad (with one exception, the older brother of one of Theresa's students, who is a very minor character). One man in particular, a social worker who helps Theresa with a student, is as mysterious as Theresa herself. He obviously has demons of his own, but I expected to understand him more, given how much of a role he plays. By the time Theresa gets involved with the social worker, she isn't interested in talking or touching anymore. She's only interested in raw sex with the various men leaving her roach-infested home before daylight.

The final spoiler concerns who kills Theresa. The movie sets itself up as a mystery in a way, leading you to guess which one of the "likely suspects" will end up killing her, and I changed my mind several times. I was wrong. The guy who killed her came out of the blue (or, more accurately, out of the bar). Theresa unknowingly picks up a handsome homosexual who had just broken up with his boyfriend. He can't have intercourse, either because he's drunk or he feels no sexual desire for Theresa. She tells him to leave, he gets upset, she makes some unkind remarks, he goes berserk, then kills and rapes her (apparently the violence excited him). I don't know if the real-life killer was a homosexual; I couldn't find any reference to that. If the killer wasn't a homosexual, then it would be interesting to speculate why Rossner would insert that plot element. The movie had a sense of inevitability about it, that Theresa was going to die somehow. There was a glimmer of hope near the end, when it seemed like Theresa was giving up her cocaine and quaalude habit, but she continued to pick up men in bars (perhaps a more dangerous habit).

This film has a very seventies look, feel, and sound to it, but I would not say that it is a dated story. Pain and repression, as well as self-destructive behaviors, are alive and well today, and so this film serves as a kind of timeless cautionary tale. It is dangerous for a woman to go to bars and take the worst men home to engage in unprotected sex. That's almost as risky as being a street prostitute. I took away one star from this film because it doesn't really help us understand Theresa's character, even if it gives us a lot of "circumstantial evidence." If the movie seems a little too long or a little too slow, that's only because of the necessarily interminable bar and apartment scenes. Self-destructive behavior is seldom fun to watch. The most enjoyable scenes are those with Theresa interacting with the children, but that was not the focus of the story.

Movie Review: Great acting - terrible story!
Summary: 2 Stars

This is really a very sad, sad story. I remember watching it and thinking at the end, "This really sucks!" I won't give away the entire plot, but if you can think of a woman in her 20's, with a job at a school (so she should be leading a somewhat low key life) and tons of men that treated her like crap, then this is your flick! The worst part must be the ending. Some movies, you suffer through the whole thing, and then you get a really good ending .... but this one, you just get a crappy story with an even crappier ending. As much as I love Diane Keaton, and her acting is great by the way, this movie is a real downer. If you are in the mood to get depressed, watch this one!

Movie Review: "I found this DVD!! "Looking for Mr Goodbar" (Finally)!!
Summary: 5 Stars

I found "Looking for Mr Goodbar" on DVD, on this site below!

www.Films-Classic.com

Good luck getting your copy!! This movie is worth waiting for on DVD!!

Movie Review: Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places
Summary: 4 Stars

I don't see why Paramount is taking so long to put this movie on DVD, since most classic movies were already released on DVD a long time ago, since most people use DVD's nowadays instead of VCR's since DVD's have been in style since at least 2003 and VCR's have been out of style for the longest time as well as practically obsolete.

Additionally, LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR is a bitter sweet touching kinda movie that launched Diane Keaton's acting career and was probably Diane Keatons sexiest movie of all time too, since LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR shows Diane Keaton like I've never seen her before along with the fact that Diane Keaton plays a lonely slutty drug addict school teacher down on her luck trying to find Mr. Right by hanging out in bars, humping around, hanging around the wrong kinds of people and sleeping around with the wrong kind of guys, which lead to nothing, but trouble, grief, anguish, and heartache, resulting in a very tragic ending that even made me cry when I saw this movie for the first time when I was little, since LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR obviously didn't have a happy ending to it at all.

On the other hand, LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR had some interesting action and dialogues in it by playing popular hit songs from the 1970's like "Don't Leave Me This Way" by Thelma Houston and showing us life in the 70's, which was sex, drugs, & Rock & Roll, disco, etc.

Unfortunately as this movie progressed, I noticed that things continued to go more and more downhill for the plot, climax, and conclusion to this flick since things & problems had continuosly getting worse and worse for Diane Keaton's character, which is part of what resulted in such a tragic wasteful ending of LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR, but anyone who has been lonely while trying to find Mr. or Miss Right may have had very similar experiences before finally finding the right soul mate.

This movie also had co-stars like Richard Gere and Tom Berenger, which was during their earlier days of their acting career before they were even famous.

Movie Review: Please release on DVD or BluRay soon!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

I have a handful of films I am still waiting to come out on digital format. This is high on the list!

Write your own review

Summary of Looking for Mr. Goodbar [VHS]

Based on the mid-'70s novel by Judith Rossner (which itself was based on a true story), this film was supposed to be the one that established Diane Keaton's credibility as a "serious" actress--and yet she won the Oscar for the other film she did the same year, Annie Hall. Still, Looking for Mr.?Goodbar is a solid and intriguing film, which offered the first substantial film roles to Richard Gere and Tom Berenger. Keaton is a repressed Catholic school teacher who works with deaf children. In the midst of the sexual revolution, she discovers her own appetite for carnal pleasure--but tries to keep it physical, avoiding emotional entanglement, until she meets Mr.?Really Wrong. Keaton is solid but director Richard Brooks can't keep this from dragging. --Marshall Fine

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