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.

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.

Having only recently seen this movie (four plus decades after it was made) for the first time, it definitely is a time capsule of an era gone by ... when Curtis ranked supreme as a leading man and Reynolds still drew audiences based on her fifties's films (Singing in the Rain, Hit the Deck), and America had a living president named Kennedy. That era is long gone now ... Curtis retired to Vegas and bloated, and Reynolds is known now-a-days more for being Carrie Fisher's "real" mom and/or Grace Adler's "fictional" mom. I go on about this because although this film is watchable, and really comes to life when Matthau hilariously overplays a horny movie producer, its value to me derives more from what it captures on celluloid ... an era of film-making w/ Camelot-like production values (ie.- Come September, That Touch of Pink) that ended with the passing of Kennedy.

The first five minutes or so of "Goodbye, Charlie" are simply sublime. But you can turn it off after the "Directed by Vincente Minnelli" credit comes on. But let's back up.20th Century Fox logo on and off. Nice Cinemascope shot of a yacht off the Malibu coast at night, with jazzy-rock music in the far distance and a distant swingin' party on board. Three star credits come on and off: "Tony Curtis," "Debbie Reynolds," "Pat Boone." Onto the boat, where a raucous Hollywood party is in full swing. Director Minnelli captures all the phoniness and glamour of the party. A superfast psueudo-rock number -- "Seven at Once" -- is blaring on the "Hi-Fi" as heavy-bosomed Playmate of the Year Donna Michelle shakes her ample breasts in a low cut gold dress (in 1964, this was "sexy.") Hot young folks are dancing while stuffy old agent Martin Gabel looks on with peptic-ulcer angst. Some handsome matrons (Ellen Macrae, soon Burstyn, Joanna Barnes) try to swing with the Playmate, but to no avail. Walter Matthau (in gray wig and blazer) plays poker and puffs on a big stogie.Old-fashioned director Vincente Minnelli tries some new-fashioned "hand-held camera" work (see: that year's earlier "A Hard Day's Night") to capture the ensuing action: Matthau's wife Laura Devon (the second sexiest woman after Playmate Donna Michelle) sneaks off for some hot below decks lovemaking with the barely seen stud screenwriter, "Charlie." Matthau snoops around in the kitchen of the yacht, and gets a gun when the maid isn't looking(this part of the sequence is like the opening murder sequence in the same December's "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" ) Matthau then bursts in on his wife and Charlie, starts shooting.Charlie jumps out a porthole into the ocean, but Walter's bullets kill him before he hits the drink.The party guests rush to the side of the boat and look down into the ocean where Charlie fell. Credits fly out of the water as a raucous male-female chorus sings the swinging, fun title song "Goodbye, Charlie! Hate to see you go..." What follows is a regulation 1964 animation sequence of deep sea creatures in the deep blue sea (where Charlie has gone to rest, soon to return as Debbie Reynolds) and that infectious title tune about a lothario getting his just desserts. (This song got a lot of radio play in '64/'65.) Vincente Minnelli was a pro, and this opening sequence is a lot of fun as the old (studio production values in costumes and yacht interior) fights with the new (hand-held camera, Playmate of the Year boobs) in a raucous sing-a-long opening that bids farewell to Hollywood's studio era and plants the genre as dead as Charlie with the counterculture years ahead."Goodbye, Charlie!" indeed...hate to see you go.