--- title: "The Goodbye Girl" year: 1977 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-goodbye-girl" fi1m_score: 68 critics_score: 56 critics_reviews: 7 published: "2026-09-20T06:00:29.764907+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T06:00:53.783396+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Goodbye Girl (1977) Directed by Herbert Ross · 1h 51m · MPA PG · Comedy, Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 68** · Critics 56 from 7 reviews *In a sentence:* The lodger is more likeable than the woman refusing to leave his flat, and the film half knows it > Neil Simon’s romantic comedy runs on wisecracks, and Richard Dreyfuss makes them sound like a man thinking. Marsha Mason is handed a harder job and a colder character. Worth an evening for him, for the flat, and for one disastrous first night. ## Synopsis New York, the mid-1970s. Paula McFadden (Marsha Mason), a dancer who has not worked in years, lives with her daughter Lucy McFadden (Quinn Cummings) in a small Manhattan flat that belongs to her actor boyfriend. He leaves for a film in Italy without telling her and sublets the place. Elliot Garfield (Richard Dreyfuss), an actor from Chicago, arrives in the rain with a key and a lease, in town to play Richard III off Broadway for a director, Mark (Paul Benedict), who has his own ideas about the part. Paula refuses to move out. They divide the rooms, share the one bathroom and argue over the rent, while she goes back to auditions with her friend Donna (Barbara Rhoades) and the child watches the pair of them with more sense than either. ## Review Neil Simon’s script puts two people who cannot stand each other into one small New York flat and waits for them to fall in love, and Herbert Ross films it much as he would have staged it: in rooms, with the door shut. That is the whole ambition, and there is nothing wrong with it. *The Goodbye Girl* is a good evening if you can take 111 minutes of people answering back, and Richard Dreyfuss makes the case for it almost on his own. Elliot Garfield (Dreyfuss) arrives soaked, with a key and a signed sublet, and finds Paula McFadden (Marsha Mason) and her daughter Lucy McFadden (Quinn Cummings) still in residence, because the man who sublet it never told them. Dreyfuss plays Elliot as an actor who knows he is one. He declaims, he sulks, he plays the guitar in the small hours. What makes it more than a turn is how fast he drops it when the child is there. He talks to her as if she were a colleague, and the film’s warmest scenes are the ones where the two of them agree, quietly, that her mother is impossible. Mason has the harder job. Paula has been left by two men, the second while she was out, and Simon writes her defence as rudeness, an hour of it, before he lets her be anything else. Mason is good at the anger and better in the moments it slips: at an audition she is too old for, in a doorway when Elliot says something kind and she has no answer ready. But the script gives Elliot the jokes and Paula the volume, and for a long stretch we were on the lodger’s side and not sure the film wanted us there. Some critics at the time found her exhausting. We would not go that far. Simon has written her fast and mistaken fast for funny. The subplot is where the film is best. Elliot has come to New York to play Richard III off Broadway for a director, Mark (Paul Benedict), who has decided the king should be a shrieking caricature of a homosexual. Elliot argues, loses, and does it. The rehearsals are funny in the ordinary Simon way. The first night is something else. We laughed a great deal, then Ross cut to Dreyfuss’s face while the audience laughed at him, and we stopped and felt for the man, slightly ashamed of ourselves. It is the one sequence where the comedy and the pain are on screen at the same moment. The joke leans on an idea of gay men that was cheap in 1977 and has not improved; the film knows Mark’s idea is a bad one but collects the laughs on the way to saying so. David M. Walsh shoots the flat in brown lamplight and the opening in rain, so that Elliot arrives on the worst night of his year. Albert Brenner’s flat is the real third lead: too small, one bathroom, a kitchen you pass through to reach anything, a bedroom door that matters. Ann Roth keeps Paula in leotards and leg warmers, a dancer who has not stopped dressing as one, and gives Elliot the shirts of a man who thinks he is bohemian. Dave Grusin’s score is light and jazzy and stays out of the way. John F. Burnett cuts in long two-shots and lets the lines volley, which is what Simon needs. Once they stop fighting, the film has little left to do, and the last half hour shows it. Simon produces a job offer to put at risk what he has spent an hour building, and the scenes that follow are pleasant and slack. Cummings speaks Simon’s lines like a small adult, which some will find hard to bear; we found she underplays them enough to get away with it, and she is never asked to be cute. Critics have never agreed about this one; the argument is about Simon. We are nearer the admirers without joining them. See it for Dreyfuss, for the flat, and for that first night. Bring a tolerance for people who answer a question with another question. *Fi1m score 68, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (7) - **Empire**, Caroline Westbrook (70/100, inferred): The film is best remembered for its cracking Neil Simon screenplay. Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss form a memorable duo in this joyful reminder of a romantic comedy genre. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/goodbye-girl-review/) - **Time Out** (70/100, inferred): This is a classy Broadway sitcom adaptation written by Neil Simon. Mason and Dreyfuss bring comic panache and vitality to the reluctant cohabitants, though the film flags once they get together. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-goodbye-girl) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): The review praises the offbeat romantic casting of Dreyfuss and vibrant Mason as lovers in spite of themselves. It highlights strong performances from the leads and supporting cast in the Neil Simon script about reluctant roommates falling in love. [Read](https://variety.com/1976/film/reviews/the-goodbye-girl-1200423881/) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (50/100, inferred): Ebert finds the film funny overall with its heart in the right place but notes unacknowledged complications and an unsympathetic female lead. He praises Richard Dreyfuss's performance and some later scenes while criticizing the first hour. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-goodbye-girl-1977) - **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (30/100, inferred): Kael dislikes the film's forced snappiness and two-liners, calling out Neil Simon's writing and the defensive, hostile lead character. She notes Dreyfuss brings the only moments of substance but finds the role demeaning. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/01/16/the-current-cinema-56) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (30/100, inferred): Canby finds the film exhausting and not much fun, criticizing its relentless wisecracks that make it seem rude to its own characters. He notes the performances keep things afloat early on but the script undermines the characters. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/01/archives/film-goodbye-girl-full-of-wisecracks.html) - **Collider**, Liam Gaughan (75/100, inferred): The Goodbye Girl is a pretty old-fashioned romantic comedy that nonetheless became a major contender at the Academy Awards because it simply hit all the notes right. It set a record at the Academy Awards because Richard Dreyfuss became the youngest actor to ever win the Oscar for Best Actor. [Read](https://collider.com/best-1977-movies-classics/) ## Details - **Director:** Herbert Ross - **Director:** Herbert Ross - **Writer:** Neil Simon - **Cinematography:** David M. Walsh - **Editor:** John F. Burnett - **Music:** Dave Grusin - **Production design:** Albert Brenner - **Costume design:** Ann Roth - **Producer:** Ray Stark - **Cast:** Richard Dreyfuss as Elliot Garfield; Marsha Mason as Paula McFadden; Quinn Cummings as Lucy McFadden; Paul Benedict as Mark; Barbara Rhoades as Donna; Theresa Merritt as Mrs. Crosby; Michael Shawn as Ronnie; Patricia Pearcy as Rhonda - **Runtime:** 1h 51m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 30 November 1977 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Romance - **Box office:** $102 million ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AU, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1978: Best Actress (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Writing, Original Screenplay (nominated); Best Actor (won) ## If you liked this - *The Apartment* (1960), Fi1m 91: The New York flat as a character, and a romance that earns its sadness. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-apartment.md) - *The Owl and the Pussycat* (1970): Ross again, another pair of mismatched New Yorkers shouting across a shared room. - *A Touch of Class* (1973), Fi1m 66: Glenda Jackson and George Segal bicker through London; sharper and less pleased with itself. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-touch-of-class.md) - *Annie Hall* (1977), Fi1m 86: Same year, same city, the same fast talk with more doubt underneath it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/annie-hall.md) - *Green Card* (1990): Strangers forced to share a flat and a story, played slower and softer. --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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