Au revoir Charlie

I saw, "Goodbye, Charlie" when I was about 20. That's a hard age to please. "Been there, done it, seen it; yet another piece of trite," was my attitude.

Debbie Reynolds was beige-haired, Tony Curtis, getting on. Overly-mounted pastel-colored movies bored me - hitless, and this was another end-of-an-era white-bread piece of rubbish. Doris Day and Sandra Dee were what the Sixties had degenerated into: broad, trite and forced.

Besides, there were well-known rumors about Debbie's pinch-hitting proclivities. The premise of "Goodbye Charlie" was awkward and perverse. I suspected that Hollywood was presenting it as an inside joke.

So 35 years later, I tried it again on TMC. ...And I LOVED it. Well, much of it. I loved gorgeous Ellen Burstyn and Joanna Barnes - indeed, the scene at The Bistro Restaurant with these latter two and Reynolds had me p******g myself, if you'll forgive the vulgarity. Ms. Barnes can do no wrong as a character playing straight when someone is putting the screws to her. Her slant-eyed, cool demeanor is pure joy.

The fact that Vincent Minnelli directed it and that George Axelrod wrote the script was an important revelation.

What's more, I thought that the ladies' dresses were magnificent. How well they dressed, back then!

And when Walter Matthau said, "If I weren't Hungarian, I'd be speechless!" is a classic retort. I loved his character, also - and he's a man who's garnered so much praise over the years that I usually just roll my eyes when I see him. He looked smart as paint in his black tie and toupee - and the way he worked the room when he's sprung from jail was utterly delicious.

In the final quarter hour, when I saw where the film was headed, I switched stations, unwilling to have my favorable impressions destroyed.

Axlerod is a master, and I'm sorry to have given him short shrift for so many years. Those who want to see a quintessential Sixties movie, along with some rib-tickling one-liners, want to go with this one.

I remember this movie as a child when there were really funny and good movies shown on TV Sunday mornings. This was one of the "sixties" movies that I enjoyed watching even as a kid...I could get the jokes and the cast was of people I recognized and liked. I didn't get a chance to see this one until the early "seventies" for the first time, but I could enjoy some of the stars I grew to love in other movies. I would give it a solid "8" out of "10". I am very hard on movies that are comedies and have really good comedic actors. See it for yourself. I would also recommend "SWITCH (1991)" with Ellen Barkin and Jimmy Smits.

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.

Perhaps best known nowadays as the film that inspired Blake Edwards to write and direct the amusing 'Switch' with Ellen Barkin, this earlier comedy features the same idea of a shameless philanderer reincarnated in the body of a woman. Clocking in at close to two hours, 'Goodbye Charlie' takes an incredibly long time to warm up with over 25 minutes elapsing before the comedy really kicks in since the philanderer (in the woman's body) has amnesia at first. Once the film gets into the swing of things though, it is a decent ride. Debbie Reynolds does well acting tough and manly, casually ogling other women and so on. It is not as dynamic a performance as Barkin in 'Switch' (who nailed the mannerisms of her male self) as we never actually see much of Charlie before he is killed, but Reynolds is still dynamite. There are also several fascinating moments as he/she gets more used to being a woman, even allowing him/herself to be seduced. Additionally, in a daring move, he/she even tries to seduce his/her best friend, played by Tony Curtis. Speaking of which, Curtis does well with a tricky role here. At times, it seems like he is also about to fall for his macho best friend in a lady's body. The experience is let down by a tacked-on cop-out ending that fails to capitalise on all this sexual tension, but the film pokes enough at gender identity issues to remain interesting.

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.