Whitech It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

jarrodmcdonald-1 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.

Cristi_Ciopron I liked Debbie Reynolds (who nonetheless looked as if she could be as bland as the movie's main quirk, a trope met from Topper and Capra, to movies with Pitt or Bridges, always lacking eeriness; but here, she wasn't, she gives some kind of a Method acting) playing a man being a woman, she made a good role, I liked Curtis' talk with Carmel about felonies, and the 'Psycho' spoof, with the cellar and the inspector in the street.The script showcases a guy's strong wish to know that his deceased friend has been redeemed, saved. From exhaustion, alcohol and hunger, he sleeps, and in his dream his demised pal shows up as a girl (this way, George mourns him, by expressing his asexual love for his friend), and also gets a 2nd chance, to behave better …. It has all been a dream. And in his dream, the writer saw his friend redeemed. Charlie has been dead all along, since the opening scene. And instead of Charlie returning from his ocean rest, a dog will guard George's newfound love. Let us distinguish idea, quirk, look, style; the idea is of the dream and redemption, with mourning and longing, the quirk is the mentioned trope, the look is astonishing, the style is a '60s salad.I enjoyed the '60s glamor. There are parties with nice statuesque, shapely women. Joanna Barnes, Laura Devon, Myrna Hansen are so good-looking, and so is the movie itself, which I expected from so reputed a director, but in fact this is a modest _glam comedy (a few scenes were good, once the spoof begins), not very inspired or funny, averagely amusing certainly, not always in the best taste.I have read somewhere an obviously wrong plot summary: 1st, all could have been George's dream, from drunkenness and hunger, and in fact it has all been a dream, since the blonde who shows up at the denouement, and her dog, have previous lives, a past, they don't just show up mysteriously, claiming to be another beings; and 2nd, Charlie isn't punished again, but released, redeemed, for her unwillingness to take advantage of the inexperienced guy who proposed her, Charlie behaved better as a woman, ceased manipulating others. The idea being that, in George's dream, Charlie did 'change his ways', became better. But the director wished to save the twist for the denouement, instead of allowing it to permeate the plot, to shine from inside the plot.The screwball and the satire were mediocre, the spoof worked. It didn't seem to me like a good movie (though it has exciting or very satisfying scenes), because of the lousy script (which was however a hit, there's an American infatuation with this kind of bland fantasy, about the dead being given more time on Earth) and its _soullessness, its glamorizing of shallow beings (not entirely, but almost devoid of humane reactions), though the idea of the script certainly has charm (which, as a matter of fact, in retrospect subverts the _soullessness, as it has all been George's longing, his search for a redemptive solution), so I rank it as a charming movie, as a '60s salad of glamor. There's a Protestant tale of retribution, _expectably devoid of dramatic force, and a _glam comedy. One's not supposed to be awed by the director or the fame. I mostly dislike the quirk of the script, the avatars of a dead person, the idea of justice, because of its defining blandness, seen in countless other movies, it has a Protestant flavor, but it's something that apparently the American audiences enjoy. Otherwise, the comedy, made in a _glam style, seems a bit heartless, a bit soulless (though the twist might change this, as it has been George's way of dreaming a generous resolution, of seeing his friend redeemed, saved, changed albeit posthumously), and its satire and social world, uninspiring.

Isaac5855 GOODBYE CHARLIE was a slightly smarmy but very funny comedy from the 60's that I grew up with. This was the story of a womanizing cad named Charlie Sorel, who one night is partying on a yacht and romances a married woman. He is caught by her husband who shoots Charlie, who falls overboard into the ocean. Charlie's body is not immediately located but a memorial service is held, attended by his best friend George (Tony Curtis) and dozens of women Charlie romanced over the years. A couple of days later a woman (Debbie Reynolds) is found naked on the beach outside of Charlie's apartment, where George is sorting out Charlie's things. We soon learn that this woman is a female reincarnation of Charlie Sorel, apparently God's ironic way of punishing Charlie for the dreadful way he treated women all his life. Charlie initially freaks out at the idea of being a woman but soon shows he hasn't learned a thing and reverts to the old Charlie even though he is a woman now. I was just a kid when this film first hit theaters but I still thought it was pretty funny. Reynolds and Curtis are energetic in the lead roles and are well-supported by Walter Matthau as the guy who shot Charlie, Pat Boone as a schnook who found and falls in love with the reincarnated Charlie and Joanna Barnes and Ellen MacRae as two of the women in old Charlie's life. BTW, Ellen MacRae later changed her name to Ellen Burstyn. It's no cinematic masterpiece, but it will make you laugh. Remade many years later as SWITCH.

IRVIN8 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.