Dave Diane Keaton is excellent, playing the protagonist Theresa Dunn, a teacher who loves having casual sex and taking drugs. She hooks up with a variety of men, some of them dangerous.This film is based on a novel about a real-life NYC teacher, Roseann Quinn.

starrchild2004 I saw this movie many years ago and never really understood how tragic it was until I viewed it at an older age. I appreciate this masterpiece as I was intrigued by Theresa's story. So much so, that I read Judith Rossner's book and searched the internet for the truth behind the story. It is no secret that this tale was about Roseann Quinn and the tragic end to her life. I hits home as that the main character is really not too much different than some of the women that I knew in my young adulthood. It only took one bad decision to end it all. Diane Keaton did a wonderful job in this role. She seemed so sad because she never really did find what she was looking for. Or did she? I recall that she said she never cried despite the pain she had gone through as a child. She did not even cry at the end of the film. I think that she accepted her fate because she realized that she would never find that father figure that she desired. Very sad story, and so real.

migca I saw "Mr. Goodbar" at a film festival screening, several years after it's initial release. In some ways (none of them good), this movie has haunted me ever since. I can still recall feeling strangely perturbed and confused as the film neared it's final minutes. I guess I expected that the ending would somehow magically bring the preceding grimy and occasionally chaotic events into some sort of focus.All I got from that ending was a brutal stomach ache similar to the lingering pain induced by a cheap sucker punch to the gut. I will readily admit to having gained no further understanding or insight into this film over the years. I still can't imagine why anyone would make a film like this, or what possible value or entertainment viewers derived from it.For me, Diane Keaton's performance is the only thing in the movie that keeps it from getting the lowest vote. That she managed to project some warmth and humanity from such a crudely drawn, relentlessly sad, and gratuitously self-destructive character, only made the ending that much more horrific and senseless. It's easily one of the worst experiences I've ever had in a movie theater.

JoeytheBrit Probably the biggest problem with this movie – other than its insistence that all men are either worthless sexual predators or pathetic, near-impotent panderers – is the fact that it has aged so badly. In an age when a small army of women under 30 seem hell-bent on doing all they can to turn their livers and septums to mush in as short a time as possible, Diane Keaton's Theresa Dunn no longer comes across as somebody out of the ordinary.Diane Keaton gives a performance that is by turns both sensitive and irritating as her character revolves around her schizophrenic lifestyle. As a child, Dunn was encased in plaster, a result of scoliosis, and it seems that this is what compels her to take so many risks in her effort to find the kind of freedom she was denied as a kid – both by her spell in traction and by a harsh, overbearing Catholic upbringing. She is full of love, as indicated by her relationship with the deaf children she teaches, but gives it in all the wrong ways, leading to encounters with equally warped characters. One of these is Richard Gere in the role that first brought him to Hollywood's attention and which serves as a kind of template for the role of Jesse in Jim McBride's ill-fated remake of Breathless. The other is Tom Berenger, a borderline psychopath tortured by his own homosexuality. Both are characters no right-thinking adult would want to get involved with, but Keaton's self-destructive personality draws her to them, and while you want her to break free from her sleazy night-life a part of you can't help thinking she's going to get what she deserves.The problem with Dunn is that she engages the viewers' sympathy in her straight persona then keeps pushing them away with her self-indulgent excesses and sometimes callous treatment of those who love her most. Combined with the relentlessly depressing atmosphere of impending tragedy that hangs over the entire film, this makes Looking for Mr. Goodbar a difficult film to enjoy (or even watch) and one to which many people wouldn't wish to return.