Love, Simon triumph in 'Goodbye Girl'

By Donna Chernin

Dumpers and dumpees of the world, take heart!

Love might find you bruised and battered or spoiled and cynical, but "The Goodbye Girl" will restore your faith in old fashioned romance.

It's a movie that makes you feel warm and good inside, a nice Christmas gift by the master of comedy, Neil Simon.

Yet this is different from many of the playwright's previous ventures. Gone is Simon's reliance on oneline-gag laughs, and in its place is a story of pathos and poignance.

There are, to be sure, several clever quips, most of them coming from the marvelous Richard Dreyfuss, but the humor derives from the inherent comical situations rather than the dialog. The thrust of "The Goodbye Girl," which opens here tomorrow, is aimed at stirring feelings rather than laughs. It works.

The movie has been directed by Herbert Ross who has gave us "Play It Again, Sam" and "What's New Pussycat?" Simon wrote "The Goodbye Girl" for his wife, Marsha Mason, and Richard Dreyfuss. It introduces 10-year-old Quinn Cummings. As usual, Simon's story is simple and has characters.

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It begins when Miss Mason as Paula, a dejected and disillusioned dancer, has suddenly been dumped by her actor boyfriend. To compound her romantic casualty, she is also about to be evicted from her apartment with her 10-year-old daughter. This is because her derelict boyfriend, in addition to running off to Italy, also sublet their apartment to a male friend of his.

Now enters Richard Dreyfuss as Elliot Garfield, a scraggly bearded, super-charged actor with weird habits and a warm heart. After Paula's prolonged hysteria, Elliot, a recent dumpee himself, puts his facile thumb on their problem: Paula may be occupying the apartment, but he has the lease, and so why don't they share the place? Separate rooms, of course.

What begins as a head-on clash of personalities and living habits Paula and her daughter need quiet while Elliot strums his guitar to cure his insomnia and meditates every morning complete with chants and incense eventually turns into a

full-blown romance. Improbable as it might seem, you sense love might be growing, you hope it will and when it finally does, you feel good.

On the surface, a more mismatched pair you're not likely to find. Paula is a few years older, Elliot is a couple inches shorter. Paula is cynical and angry after having been hurt several times in love; and Elliot's exuberant and possessed of a marvelous sense of humor despite his setbacks.

So hostile is Paula's character, in fact, that a minor problem of the film is that she is sometimes so shrewish, you wonder how Elliot can ever see through the nasty veneer to find the warm woman beneath.

But no matter. This is a modernday fairy tale, written by Simon to affirm the need for people to be open and receptive to love no matter how many times they have been hurt.

There is a sweet relationship of mother and daughter, with Quinn Cummings as the youngster occasionally making comments that might sound too precocious and precious for a 10 year old. But I met her and, believe me, Simon toned down the lines for her in writing the script. Miss Mason plays the role of Paula convincingly, but it is Dreyfuss who dazzles.

It would, in fact, be hard for most females to resist Elliot Garfield or Richard Dreyfuss, because you begin to be unable to differentiate between the two, so splendidly does Dreyfuss capture his personality. Here is a man who is at once glib and gentle, brash and vulnerable. He is filled with a whimsy for life and a generosity of spirit.

Elliot can be bummed out by being forced to portray Richard III as a screaming homosexual with a hunchback in a scene that's hilarious. But soon he can get high by imper-. sonating Bogie on the rooftop, and never mind that his tuxedo is rented and the pouring rain is drenching his candlelight pizza dinner.

The scene where Elliot confronts Paula in the bathroom with their developing infatuation and smothers her with kisses and hugs could likely make cinematic history as a new offbeat love scene.

The movie's ending is thoughtful and sensitive and shows the pangs of a girl like Paula who has said "goodbye" so often that she can't believe it might just be "so long."

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Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss in "The Goodbye Girl"