Modern Romance

1981 Directed by Albert Brooks

Robert was madly in love with Mary. Mary was madly in love with him. Under the circumstances they did the only thing they could do... they broke up.

A film editor breaks up with his girlfriend, unsure if he is in love.

Albert Brooks Kathryn Harrold Bruno Kirby James L. Brooks Jane Hallaren Bob Einstein Albert Henderson Meadowlark Lemon George Kennedy Tyann Means Thelma Leeds

93 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Sean Baker 2

Wanted to re-watch this wonderful film. Hasn't lost any of its charm. Great film. Bought it in HD on iTunes... although i hear the Indicator Blu-ray has great extras.
Noticed that Frederick Elmes did camera operation. You can tell there is a master behind the camera moves... they are tight and precise.
Review by Alicia Malone ★★★★ 3

Watched in honor of Bob Einstein, the comedic actor who just passed away - he appears in a memorable scene with his brother Albert (who changed his last name to Brooks for obvious reasons!) Brooks co-wrote the film, and stars as a paranoid man who breaks up with his girlfriend... only to decide to get back together with her the following day. While his actions at times are a little stalkerish, watching this movie made me realize how much I miss these mid-budget comedies - with their simple focus on good writing and interesting characters.
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 2

94/100
Albert Brooks as an artist burrows so far into scenarios of neurosis that it goes beyond a personal feel and instead takes on a darker, universal image. Robert is a jealous, unstable individual in spite of his delusions of understanding, but he's engrossing and relatable nonetheless. We'd all be lying, or at least, *I'd* be lying, if we said we didn't identify in any way with this man. He is an exaggerated amalgamation of our fears, insecurities, and anxieties, but there's a great deal of truth in his life and in his relationship, and Modern Romance glides through a concentrated section of honest emotional weight while still making you laugh. Comedy and heartbreak go hand in hand, with sly…
Review by Kenji Fujishima ★★★★★ 4

The truly amazing thing about Albert Brooks's "Modern Romance" is how subtle its depths truly are. At one point, Mary (Kathryn Harrold) offhandedly wonders aloud to Robert (Brooks) whether his conception of romance is based more on movie fantasy than reality—but this rhetorical observation doesn't really resonate until, later on in the film, we see Robert's clingy obsessiveness pitted against Mary's careerist leanings first at that business dinner he interrupts, then in the cabin-in-the-woods finale. Maybe it's not so much that Robert lives in a fantasy world, but that his over-idealized conception of romance simply can't help but seem almost quaint in modern society. But, of course, Brooks's comic intelligence is too sharp to settle for such facile nostalgia; he's…
Review by Glenn Kenny ★★★★★ 1

Perfect.
Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★½

90/100
[originally written on my blog]
Switch the Quaaludes to soju and have Robert pursue a different-but-similar woman in the second half and this could be a Hong Sang-soo picture, though its depiction of masculine anxiety is much more overtly comedic. It also uncannily prefigures the Onion's classic story "Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested," except that Brooks understands how sheer relentlessness can in fact create a folie à deux that ensnares otherwise sensible women; the movie's greatest triumph is the sheer horror inspired by what would constitute a traditional, clichéd happy ending in a Hollywood romcom. (I do wish he'd omitted the closing title crawl, which is funny enough but detracts from the perverse power of that final "romantic"…

Recent reviews

Review by WSchube ★★★★½

better quaalude scene than ‘wolf of wall street.’
Review by Tunascribbles ★★★★★

- a beautiful melange of obsession and cinephilia and, yes, romance
- I love when movies just move on the same track the whole time, no breaks, we're just following this guy
- who by the way is SO GOOD albert Brooks is perfection
- best use of final crawl I've ever seen
Review by Sam ★★★★

What a lovely mess
Review by Cosmo 1

An insufferable character that I can relate to deeply in many, many ways. The few scenes with James L. Brooks are phenomenal. A good watch.
Review by Nick Tassone ★★★★

i just really like albert brooks
Review by William_Leitch ★★★★

Enjoyed the naturalistic, low-key performances. The character psychology of Albert Brooks' character is timelessly accurate. Only he can deny himself happiness even when he has everything he wants.
Gorgeous cinematography and the supporting cast are excellent.
Watched the Indicator blu-ray.
Review by SlothropsMonkey ★★★½

Woody Allen plus incessant repetition plus meta-commentary about film making equals too much anxiety and not enough quaaludes.
Review by Ray Dademo ★★★★★

An acrid, authentic meditation on jealousy. Brooks has gets more to chew on as an actor than he usually gives himself.

Saved in the editing = the ending

Indecision.

He keeps telling/involving people in his narrative, as though what’s concerning him must be of great interest to the parking garage guy.

I’m alone. What am I gonna do? Hug myself?
Alone is a good place to be

Even though he made the choice, he can only see himself as an excision from Mary’s life.
Review by RaanShalom ★★

Wow. This was really boring. Every scene runs ten-minutes too long. Albert Brooks talks to himself for the majority of the film. This is the only movie that made Quaaludes look boring.