Comments | ceebeegee: The Goodbye Girl and The Wedding Singer

ceebeegee

The Goodbye Girl and The Wedding Singer

Mar 13, 2007 18:08

I downloaded a couple of albums last night from iTunes--The Goodbye Girl and The Wedding Singer. I used to have the first one but I lost the tape a few years ago. It's not a bad score--some of the songs are quite sweet, like "I Think I Can Play This Part" and "Paula." "Richard Interred" is also very clever. The score doesn't blow me away exactly ( Read more... )

movies, music, theater, broadway, '70s, television, new york city

Comments 8

neoscribe March 13 2007, 23:04:48 UTC

Caught The Goodbye Girl the movie on AMC a few months back when I was over at someone's that has cable. Held my attention more than Casino Royale (the original)

ceebeegee March 14 2007, 00:20:17 UTC

You saw the original, right? Such a great movie. Quinn Cummings was adorable (and got an Oscar nom) and there are so many quotable scenes. I love the one where he says "I got a lawyer friend--" and she immediately knows he's an actor.

dry_2olives March 14 2007, 00:12:21 UTC

I didn't see the musical Goodbye Girl, but its problems became rather well known. The authors never figured out how to make Bernadette's character sympathetic and Martin Short, who was making his Broadway debut, was pretty much handed the show. But the two of them looked great together singing "Paula" on the Tony Awards. I believe Gene Saks was fired as director and that was the end of the Simon/Saks partnership. The weird thing is that the London cast album has an almost entirely new score.

And yes, I couldn't believe all the animosity toward The Wedding Singer among the... ah... other critics. I thought it was very clever fluff. And yeah, that opening number was terrific.

ceebeegee March 14 2007, 00:22:03 UTC

Yes, the...other critics...need to allow themselves just to enjoy a fun, sweet show. Such snobbery on that board, it's really off-putting.

dry_2olives March 14 2007, 00:27:05 UTC

Well, to be fair, I know at least one critic who loves fun, sweet shows and he completely panned The Wedding Singer. Sometimes one person's sweet is another person's dumb.

wonderpanther March 14 2007, 01:44:25 UTC

Seth and I rented the remake from Blockbuster a little while back. When we popped it in, we realized that they had given us the original by mistake. We were fine with that.

ceebeegee March 14 2007, 04:53:43 UTC

You didn't miss much, believe me ;-) The original is far superior--it was nominated for all sorts of Oscars and Richard Dreyfuss won for Best Actor. The remake was sort of charmless although Jeff Daniels wasn't too bad.

wonderpanther March 14 2007, 12:13:20 UTC

We saw the Wedding Singer with cheapie tickets. It was really cute, not a life-changing experience but it was fun and the songs were fun and the lead was very good.