What starts out like an opening to a sitcom quickly turns into a charming romantic comedy as two unlikely roommates fall for each other despite their many quirks.

Marsha Mason is the down on her luck, perpetually dumped Broadway dancer with a child in tow and Richard Dreyfuss is the odd, self-absorbed actor who subleased the apartment before Mason and her boyfriend broke up.

Watching these two spar, laugh, and love together is exhilarating, exhausting, and incredibly fun thanks to Neil Simon's quick witted dialogue.

A must see!

Poor Marsha Marson. All of her relationships end in failure. The guy simply walks out. She has a precocious daughter, devilishly played by Quinn Cummings. The latter received a supporting actress nomination and faded from the movie scene real fast. Where are you Quinn darling?

Forced to share an apartment with a stranger, Mason may finally be on the right track. Richard Dreyfuss is that man and in a surprise Oscar winning performance (Richard Burton was also up for Equus that year), he is perfect in the role as the charmer.

By movie's end Dreyfuss has to go off to somewhere but unlike the other men in her life, will return. How do we know he is coming back? Just see this delightful film and find out.

Oscar-winner Richard Dreyfuss exudes lots of kooky, ego-fed charisma and has energy to spare in "The Goodbye Girl" but there's nothing here to keep his character together with Marsha Mason's--except a few plot contrivances. Mason plays a single mom trying to find work as a dancer on Broadway, Dreyfuss is a burgeoning stage actor who has been promised her apartment. They pick at each other until one night he kisses her and that seems to change nearly everything between them. Once their romance begins, almost every scene thereafter is a bummer. Mason harps on redoing her apartment ("Go be a movie star," she tells Dreyfuss, "I'll be here hanging up my wallpaper."). What is her irrational need to find a man and set up house? It's more important to her than finding work. Mason looks smashing in a pixie cut that accentuates her big gummy smile, but her character's insecure, moody behavior is enough to drive any reasonably sane man away. Thank goodness for daughter Quinn Cummings' smart mouth, Dreyfuss may never return. **1/2 from ****