Goodbye Lover

MPAA Rating: R

Entertainment: +1

Content: -3

Sandra Dunmore (Patricia Arquette) appears attractive and popular. But, as a real estate agent selling high priced property, she often finds herself longing for a little more out of life, especially money. And she will do just about anything to get it. Her alcoholic, ad-executive husband Jake (Dermot Mulroney) shares those same aspirations, as do his Brother Ben (Don Johnson) and Bens insecure employee Peggy (Mary-Louise Parker). But where are they going to find the money, and once they find it, just how are they going to get it? GOODBYE LOVER turns out to be a dull, slow moving, and hard to follow thriller with a lot of greedy characters going after a lot of money. The only bright spot is the sometimes funny and always cynical Detective Pompano (Ellen Degeneres).

The film begins with a fairly graphic and seductive discussion of sex over the telephone and it goes downhill from there. Sexual content abounds, although only one brief scene of female breast and rear nudity occurs. People are shown having sex three times with noises and graphic motions in all three scenes. In a fourth scene, noises are heard in the adjoining room. All but one of the scenes involves unmarried couples committing adultery. Sexual humor also occurs regularly throughout. There are many violent scenes, but none of them are especially graphic. The dialog is filled with garbage filth including 53 f-words, 13 s-words and 17 regular profanities. The combination of objectionable language and sexual content is more than enough to discourage saying hello to GOODBYE LOVER.

Preview Reviewer: John Adair
Distributor: Warner Bros., 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522

Summary
The following categories contain objective listings of film content which contribute to the subjective numeric Content ratings posted to the left and on the Home page.

Crude Language: Many (22) times - Mild 11, Moderate 11

Obscene Language: Many (75) times (f-word 53, s-word 13, other 9)

Profanity: Many (18) times - Regular 17 (G 1, GD 10, J 4, C 1, JC 1); Exclamatory 1 (Oh my God)

Violence: Many times Mild and Moderate (people beaten, man thrown from building, body cut during autopsy, dead people, hand shown of person who was burnt, man shot, woman stabbed with syringe)

Sex: Few Times (never nudity in sex scenes and all but one have motions and noises, people not shown once but noises can be heard, between married couple in bed, between unmarried couple on couch, once in a church between unmarried couple)

Nudity: Once (brief female breast and rear of woman undressing); Near Nudity - Several times (women in underwear, woman in lingerie with lots of cleavage, woman obviously not wearing underwear under clothes, woman exposes her hips)

Sexual Dialogue/Gesture: Several times (woman describes sex act, woman suggestively removes article of clothing without nudity, woman suggestively entices man, man grabs womans breasts, references to unconventional sex)

Drugs: Many times (smoking, alcohol)

Other: Adultery used to manipulate and is considered acceptable by many characters; people with conservative values are mocked

Running Time: 104 minutes
Intended Audience: Adults

Click HERE for a PRINTER-FRIENDLY version of this review.