Looking for Mr Goodbar

Judith Rossner's calculated bestseller, about a contemporary woman's sexuality and her 'descent' into the world of New York singles bars, gets what it deserves in this old-fashioned adaptation. Behind the apparent sexual frankness lurks the familiar spectre of moral puritanism, while Brooks' script disastrously employs two standard Hollywood bulwarks as major reference points: cod Freud and American Gothic. Theresa (Keaton) hangs out in bars cruising for men, fuelled with the certain knowledge that, starting with her father, all men are pricks. Her dislocated sexuality is clumsily related back to her family: with cartoon loud-mouth Irish bigot cop for a father, Tuesday Weld as an air-hostess sister, memories of a crippled childhood and suspicions of hereditary illness, it could hardly be otherwise. As a result, Theresa is merely acted upon, an American Emmanuelle whose dreary promiscuity is driven on guilt. Only Diane Keaton's performance counters the overall heavy-handedness.