User reviews

A Goodbye can also be a Hello - not necessarily for the same person - actually quite likely not for the same person. But a Hello nonetheless. And while this dark humor filled thriller might entice and surprise you (I was, especially after the first big inciting incident, not having read anything about this) - it might run out of air after a while. I would beg to differ overall, but I can see that especially after that big shock (which some might already be aware of anyway, having read upon the movie) there seems to be a bit of downfall. And as much as I fell in love with certain characters, the ending seems a bit ... too easy. All that aside, the actors do a phenomenal job and the movie keeps the tension high throughout. And since it does have a tendancy to show you what might happen (or what some characters think should happen next), it keeps you on your toes to find out, if its true or just in the mind of the character. Very well done thriller, with a lot of "foreplay" and other erotic sidenotes, that you'll either fall for or you won't.

"Goodbye Lover" is certainly unpredictable, but there is a catch: once you've figured out the movie's cynical attitude (every single character is a slimy cheat looking for the big bucks), the twists all fall into the same pattern and lose their impact. Ellen DeGeneres is particularly grating; Don Johnson, Mary Louise Parker and even Ray McKinnon come off better, because they are pleasingly understated. (**1/2)

I read all those negative comments. I rented this movie yesterday because first I couldn't decide which film I want to see. But finally I was pleasently surprised by this good comedy and by the acting of Don Johnson and mainly Ellen DeGeneres. Her detective Rita Pompano is very funny and I love her cynicism.

This is the main reason why I vote 7 to this movie.

"Goodbye Lover" is the remedy for a person in need of sizzling, film noir mystery or laugh-out-loud comedy. Patricia Arquette and Ellen DeGeneres carry the film and both seem right at place as their characters. Arquette plays Sandra Dunmore, Don Johnson is Ben, her husband's brother. Dermot Mulroney is Jake Dunmore, Sandra's husband. A plan is being woven and you don't always know by who, as insurance money is what everyone wants. I won't give anything away, even though twists aren't the only thing this film has going for it. Like I said, I spent half the time laughing hysterically. Ellen DeGeneres is Rita Pompano, a lazy detective who hates the human race and is only in the force because "Every once in a while I get to shoot somebody." The film's script is smooth and well written, full of the right dose of thrills and laughs. Despite what many may say about this film, it is the perfect example of what film noir is all about. Not just mystery, not just comedy, but a little bit of both. A fantastic film.

This is fun movie making. Nothing earth shaking. Will not go down as a top ten of the year, but is made for an evening of relaxation and pop corn. I can't understand why so many people pan this film, especially when you consider other movies they liked. If you did like this film you might check out True Romance on the video dollar rack.

This had the chance to be a very good movie. It's quirky and dark, but the script needed to be cleaned up. There are too many coincidences and loose ends, and some important plot points are not adequately explained.

In a consitently good cast, DeGeneres is a stand-out. The role is perfect for her, and she handles it very well. The doofus partner thing is a little much, but it's fun watching her dump on him -- my guess is that they expanded his role a little to give her a chance to be mean even more often. I can't really recommend this movie, but if you like noir and DeGeneres, you might want to take a chance.

Shady married couple conspire to knock-off the husband's rich brother, but when the wife finds out her husband is in cahoots with the brother's spouse, she does some conspiring of her own. Over-plotted mystery-comedy-drama sat a long while on the shelf. Highly mediocre picture does have a great character for Patricia Arquette to play, but it still isn't funny enough nor convincing enough to make much of an impression. Though directed by the esteemed Roland Jaffe, this is just a cartoonish doodle that only served to give several under-used actors (Don Johnson, Ellen DeGeneres, Dermot Mulroney, Mary Louise Parker) a chance to be "colorful". End result is exhausting and tedious. ** from ****

Caught it on cable one night, and I quite liked it. I liked Don Johnson as much as anything I've seen him in. I even thought Patricia Arquette was funny and I really liked her, for a change. The story tries to be cleverer than it can carry off.

Goodbye Lover is a thriller-comedy that keeps you watching although it's obvious the movie doesn't take itself too serious. Patricia Arquette is married to Dermot Mulroney and she has a lover, Don Johnson. She convinces John to kill her husband, but there's one problem: her husband is his brother.

The film is very predictable, with only 2-3 exceptions. All the murders come along absoultely normal and if you add a totally annoying sick-of-life cop, Ellen de Generes, and her help, a incredibly stupid guy from Salt Lake, you get as a result a not-so-great film. One thing saved the whole movie: the ending. Pretty original and not expected.

A good watch, if you're in the mood for a simple thriller. Good performances from the actors. Vote: 5 out of 10.

But I HATED the movie. First, Ellen (sorry I love her) was terrible. She just is not that person and can't pull it off. Her having a trashy mouth and being a hard as nails cop just doesn't work at all.

After that everything else pales.

If you like Mary Louise Parker, watch Weeds and Fried Green Tomatoes and Boys on the Side, and Saved and The Client, and Angels in America, but do not watch this movie please.

Patricia Arquette - love her and actually I did love her performance in this movie, but the rest of the movie was just so awful it's a large price to pay to see her performance.

"Goodbye Lover" is a quite good dark comedy about -- as Jake Dunmore says quoting his brother Ben -- "Image is everything." Everything in this movie is about image, and yet nothing is at it appears. And in this respect the very context of the movie sustains the content exceedingly well: it's a beautifully shot movie -- too pretty, in fact. So pretty it's easy to miss the fetidness just beneath the surface.

Almost every shot is too shiny, too glossy, too seamless, too meticulously composed. Many scenes are suffused with those ubiquitous cinematic blues and oranges contemporary DPs and directors like so much, but raised to such a degree that it almost enters the realm of the fanciful. Many other scenes are done in hi-tech blacks, whites, and grays. Everything is window dressing -- reality is nothing more than appearance, beautifully symbolized by mirrors everywhere. Lots of mirrors, shiny surfaces, glass & windows, all reflecting everyone to everyone else, a world of appearances without substance, without soul. And when people aren't being reflected in mirrors they're being framed behind glass, a diorama for display. The world is just one big department store window.

Yet just as a structurally crumbling, termite-ridden house can be painted to look pristine and beautiful, so does this shiny veneer hide the most vicious, rapacious, cynical behavior. Indeed, the world in which this takes place may look beautiful, but it is very very empty and ugly. And as such this is a kind of morality tale that shows the dangers to a society that lives strictly for appearance.

There are few movies I can think of which so excellently explore this tense boundary between the shiny packaging, and the rancid stuff it hides. As Ben Dunmore says, "People worry that it's a dangerous and sh*tty world. And it is our job to make it look safe and clean." Thus our hero works at a PR firm, packaging a morally bankrupt politician as a wholesome, devout family man; the president of the PR firm pretends to be a holy man -- a rather inherent contradiction; our two principals work in a church that obviously serves Mammon over anything else: religion is just another accoutrement, something to accessorize the soul; and then there's the wedding chapel in Las Vegas, where an unctuous smile sells ersatz sincerity. [Sorry.] Etc. (In fact, it's surprising how many such examples of this there are in the movie -- the writers were very inventive and consistent in coming up with such a profusion of image vs substance motifs.)

The only person in this world of appearances who doesn't belong, Detective Rollins, is a "F*cking Mook" -- as his partner, Sergeant Rita Pompano (Ellen Degeneres), calls him. For him, appearance *is* reality. His sincerity is regarded with mocking disbelief by everybody: he obviously doesn't understand the rules of the game that everyone else is playing. Even we, the audience, take sides against him -- that's how subtly subversive and well presented -- even seductive -- this world is.

And speaking of Ellen Degeneres, she is great in this movie. Others complain that she isn't funny or witty, merely insulting. But in one of those delightful twists where the line between fiction and reality dissolves, this is her payback for the flack she took from the forces of christian oppression after she came out of the closet. Ellen obviously relishes this role -- she mercilessly mocks her Mormon partner, gets to be a "guy" (and, for an attractive woman, she is laudably unattractive in this role), and, at the end of the movie, looks ridiculous when she dresses in "drag".

This may also be Don Johnson's best movie. For once he gets to play the kind of character he seems uniquely equipped to play: a high-end used car salesman, all style, all flash, sexy in his way, but empty and sleazy. It's very fitting that when he says he's "trying to get something real in his life", he unknowingly gets quite the opposite. And, since he wants to leave the game, he no longer belongs in this world -- and is appropriately removed from the game.

Sometimes the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed ("Go For It" billboard), as is the writing ("You need to go down on your knees for her." "Well, someone obviously did."). But it's all in good spirits, and I'm willing to accept its blemishes (as it were) 'cause it succeeds admirably in most other respects. And the acting in general is uniformly solid -- in fact, it's very well cast, even the curiously unfatale femme fatale Patricia Arquette.

The movie ends on a wonderfully humorous note to the tune of "Climb Every Mountain" as image thoroughly triumphs over substance, much as it does in real life -- which may be the reason this movie doesn't sit well with many people.

The filmmakers obviously had fun making this movie, and it shows. All in all, it's a very well-made, fun movie -- if you scratch its surface. [8/10]

This movie has some interesting developments , however, Patricia Arquette's character gets annoying pretty fast and isn't very convincing as a femme fatale. Just suspend all disbelief when viewing this movie and go with the characters. Even if what they do makes hardly any sense at all. Sandra and Jake have every reason to be worried the police don't believe their story because no sane person would be convinced by them, and yet they plot another murder...

I'm usually very forgiving of movies (I'm a loyal defender of Speed 2 and The Postman), but I simply can't condone this awful, boring, and unpleasant movie. Every murder that happens is to utterly predictable that you just sit there in your seat begging for something interesting or original to happen, but it never does. Don Johnson's character is the only interesting one in the entire movie, but he's not in it for long, and things just go downhill from there. Not that I have anything against this kind of movie- one of my favorite movies last year was Wild Things, but that movie was smart, funny and interesting, and had fun characters. This loser of a movie has none of those things; the jokes are totally unfunny, and the plot developments are not the least bit interesting. Patricia Arquette is not the least bit convincing (or all that attractive, really) as a femme fatale wannabe, and Ellen DeGeneres, a great actress who could have made this character smart and funny, instead makes a character who is boring, annoying, and rather depressing to watch. Take, for example, the way she makes fun of her Mormon partner- there is no cleverness in her jokes, only rudeness, and so they all fall flat. The main reason that I was interested in this movie was because I kept hearing about all the great plot twists. Beware: there aren't really all that many, and none of them are the least bit believable. If you want a good neo-noir with fun plot twists, go rent Wild Things or The Usual Suspects, but leave this loser alone- it's not worth the film it's printed on.

The death of "Goodbye Lover" obviously came in its editing. Because watching it, you do see that hidden within the numerous layers of ridiculous bile, there was at some point, an actually coherent plot. Not to fault editor Bill Steinkamp too terribly, because while the story may be choppy and often unexplained and lacking a central arc due to the cuts made, one gets the overwhelming impression that, with or without editing, this film *stinks*.

It doesn't know whether it wants to be funny, tense, smarmy, sexy, or devious. It is literally as if the writers drew slips of paper titled "things we like about movies" from a hat and put it into the script. Director Roland Joffé (who did The Killing Fields - what happened?!) does his best, I guess, but that is not enough. The cast tries hard enough that it's only fair to warrant that it isn't their fault. But, there's nothing that could have saved this movie short of never making it.

NO,it's not "the killing fields" .

It 's a thriller which verges on parody,and the unexpected twists come at such a speed it's not always easy to follow the plot.The cast is perfect :Patricia Arquette is marvelous as a sexy blonde ,who listens to Julie Andrews ("I mistrust people over 10 who still listen to "the sound of music" " says cop Rita);but the stand out is ,IMHO,her colleague ,the cop Ray Mc Kinnon ,and his fortune cookies philosophy ;"His "I arrest you" is priceless and he delivers the last line with such a naivety he almost makes me think of Joe Brown's "nobody's perfect" .Another hilarious scene shows Arquette and Johnson making love in a church to the sound of sacred music and getting an ovation. (for the music ,needless to say)

okay, firstly i have to admit i goofed up big time. the screenplay to this movie is co-written by a certain joel cohen. i in my half bored-to-death stupor thought it was joel coen of fargo, hudsucker proxy and o! brother fame. so i decided to watch this movie on t.v the other day.

the movie though is surprisingly not so bad, it is a silly little crime thriller (?) or a smart little dark comedy ... or somewhere in between, doesnt matter. the fact of the matter is that the plot is quite unbelievable and silly, but thee are enough interesting twists coming at you all the time, that it doesnt seem so bad at all.

have a little patience and you might well be rewarded in watching this quirky little movie. give it a shot, it aint all that bad. patricia arquette is a total miscast as the femme fatale, very unconvincing. ellen degeneres is quite funny (rude, yes. but funny still) the rest of the cast just fills up the numbers in this not so bad dark comedy / light thriller

a mildly entertaining 7!

Must have missed this one back in 98, the Navy was keeping me busy.

Seeing it now in 2022, some of the names are familiar from the era.

I don't have much to add to the reviews already written. I thought the movie was all over the place and not very entertaining.

Pretty hard to watch.

"Goodbye Lover" is not a feel good film, that's for sure!!. In fact it's quite a horrible little film in which every character is a self-absorbed greedy nasty cheat.

There isn't anyone in this movie that you will warm to in any way, and that's the whole plots downfall. You have to route for someone, yet here, you wont be able to.

The plot centres around a nymphomaniac who is cheating on her alcoholic husbands brother, that is until he finds out and a whole array of incidents and twists unfold. Its watchable and certainly not a dreadful film, but its not one you will ever want to watch again, which is a shame because there are some respectable actors here - but what on earth they ever saw in such a horrible film, God only knows!!

I guess, the director enjoyed the excellent Wild Things, but his attempt to copy it in many ways did not really work. Too many illogical twists in the storyline did not surprise, but irritate me. However, it is nice to see Don Johnson appear on the big screen again. He and Ellen DeGeneres make the movie worth watching. I give it a 7.

So here's the story outline. Ben is having an affair with his alcoholic brother Jake's wife Sandra.Ben gets involved with a co-worker called Peggy and Sandra gets jealous letting Jake know about the affair. Both Jake and Sandra then kill Ben.The story should have just ended there, but then there is an insurance claim, Jake and Sandra think they will get it, but then they find out that Ben got married to Peggy. In comes in Rita Pompano, a sergeant, who then tries to solve not just Ben's murder but Peggy's too... Patricia Arquette plays Sandra, who really lives to up the blonde bimbo routine, Dermot Mulroney looks and acts strange in the whole movie and Don Johnson dies. Ellen DeGeneres had some good lines, the sarcasm didn't quite fall into place in every scene that she had, but she was okay. The movie was just so dull it did no justice towards the talent that was used for it!

I wrote this comment mainly because there are so many negative reviews posted here and fewer positive ones and I think this film definitely deserves better. I liked it very much, have seen it twice, once on the big screen and just now on DVD. It was not the least bit boring the second time even though the film relies heavily on its plot twists and the suspense they produce. I think many people just don't come to terms with cross-overs, they want either a suspense film that takes itself dead serious or a clear cut comedy. I liked the humor in the film and its outrageous characters well played by a perfectly assembled cast. Patricia Arquette is just great, a pleasure to watch! She deserves the price for the funniest sociopath femme fatale ever seen on the silver screen. Vincent Gallo in his tiny role as contract killer is the icing on the cake! The film is superbly shot and directed and features a brilliant soundtrack. I voted it a 9.

I'm not a fan of Ellen DeGeneris, but she was pretty darn good in this, really the highlight of the film. While there were too many twists and turns and the ending was a pretty ho-hum, it was interesting enough to keep your interest. Vincent Gallo has a pretty cool cameo and there were just as many plot twists that were unpredictable as there were ones that were obvious. I really don't have much more to say, but there is a ten line minimum so i will just keep typing until i have ten lines, you can stop reading, i'm just typing to get to ten lines, really not saying anything to this point, just trying to get to ten lines.

Film noir can be some of the best cinema to make it to the big screen. A depth of characters, a complex and winding plot, dark humor that makes you laugh involuntarily, a shocking ending that leaves you exhilarated can add up to a thoroughly enjoyable experience. But when these things go horribly astray, oh what a disasterous result we can have. Goodbye Lover is one of the latter, mixing bad acting, comical plot lines, and one of the worst casts ever assembled (why are Don Johnson and Dermot Mulroney allowed in Hollywood?) to create a horrible moviegoing experience the likes of which have only been matched by movies involving Roland and Emmerich. What the studio was thinking when it combined the cast of phillistines it did I will never know. What I can tell you is this movie will go down as one of the more laughably bad experiences of my life (right up there with Showgirls, I Know What You Did Last Summer and, unbelievably, its inferior sequel).