Yes - it's far fetched and schmaltzy. Yes - the critics panned it. But - I loved this movie back when it came out and I still love it now. (OMG too many years later!) The main theme of the soundtrack stays with you and is used beautifully throughout. Bancroft is great in this. There is just something about it that speaks to me despite its limitations.

I remember it fondly as a child. First time I saw Harvey Fierstein in a movie and Ann Bancroft was great as always.

It was too depressing for me to find it remotely amusing.

Garbo Talks is a disappointing film. It is about the son of a woman dying of a brain tumor tries to fulfill his mother's last wish: to meet Greta Garbo. Anne Bancroft and Ron Silver give terrible performances. The script is badly written. Sidney Lumet did a horrible job directing this movie. I was not impressed with this motion picture.

So Sweet and Funny one of my favorite Anne Bancroft films

Not worth your time.

Meeting a famous movie star, especially if you're a big movie fan, is one goal anyone can achieve until the very last minutes of your life. That's the case of 'Garbo Talks', and I liked it. When Estelle learns that she has a brain tumor and six months to live, she decides she must meet Garbo, so her son Gilbert hires a paparazzo to track Garbo down. As his obsession distances him from his wife, Gilbert's drawn to a struggling actress he meets at work. Can he find Garbo, and if so, will she talk? Starring the very good performances of Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher, and Catherine Hicks.

Disappointing and boring, which is a shame cause I like Lumet.

At it's core it's a movie about a son who loves his mother.

Anne Bancroft gives a great performance as the out-spoken and zany political activist Estelle, and her last scene in the film is pretty amazing - one long shot of her reminiscing on her life. Mostly I love the concept of this film; that cinema and it's many stars can inspire people and influence their lives in a positive way. A very beautiful and sentimental film, not to mention one with very witty dialogue. "If your head's in the toilet, don't blow bubbles."

Le regard de Sidney Lumet sur C personnages n sombre jamais dans le pathos & offre aux spectateurs une galerie de personnages drôles & touchants. S ajoute à cela une fraà (R)cheur bien agrà (C)able au regard du sujet ki d prime abord semblait en être dà (C)nuà (C).

Flat as a tack - Ron Silver as a leading man is a concept that just doesn't work. I like him as a character actor, though. The film has no energy at all, but it picks up in the final reel, when Anne Bancroft delivers quite a stunning scene all in one take. Very effective, very moving. In fact, the cutting style in the film is quite remarkable - few close-ups, few cuts, everything played out in master shots. I don't know if it's by design, of Lumet just being lazy, though. Oh, and this is probably the only film I've seen with a [i]good[/i] cameo by Harvey Fierstein.

I enjoyed this film. Of course, I love Anne Bancroft in just about anything. She left us too soon, as did her co-star, Ron Silver. I think this film is authentic in its characters and, though the plot is simple, it is really sweet.

Meeting a famous movie star, especially if you're a big movie fan, is one goal anyone can achieve until the very last minutes of your life. That's the case of <i>Garbo Talks</i>, and I liked it. When Estelle learns that she has a brain tumor and six months to live, she decides she must meet Garbo, so her son Gilbert hires a paparazzo to track Garbo down. As his obsession distances him from his wife, Gilbert's drawn to a struggling actress he meets at work. Can he find Garbo, and if so, will she talk? Starring the very good performances of Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher, and Catherine Hicks.

I may be stuck in 1984, but I wish they still made gentle movies like this, where you actually have to figure out what's going on. For Bancroft's stellar performance alone, it's worth seeing.

Here is a cute, under-the-top little small-fry could be the minorest of Lumet's minor works, but in some way like 84 Charing Cross Road, which this film's star would tackle a few years later, it is its benign slightness that is its own charm. Anne Bancroft is so good as the anarchically rational Estelle Rolfe in this movie, that there are literally moments when nothing else matters to us, or the film, but what she's saying or doing, how she's saying it and how she's doing it. Estelle isn't afraid to spend time in the clink over grocery prices, makes a scene at one point embarrassing construction workers by scolding them for jeering passing women, and won't go to her dutiful son Gilbert's wedding if it means being a protest scab. She also worships films starring Greta Garbo, whose move from silent films to her first talkie made lots of racket in advertisements with the eponymous slogan. When Estelle discovers she has a brain tumor and six months left of life, which she lives ebulliently, she concludes that she must meet Garbo. Ron Silver plays Gilbert, a Manhattan accountant Estelle even named for Garbo's frequent co-star, feels compelled to satisfy his mother's last hope in spite of Garbo's famous devotion to privacy. Lumet benefits from the sharpening of his comic touch a decade earlier with Murder on the Orient Express. Thusly, he employs unusual color schemes for comic effect. Similar to that earlier film, a major element is evoking a nostalgia for the past. This later film is merely a more straightforward version of the pining for magic and theatrics of the 1920s and '30s in which his 1974 Agatha Christie adaptation is steeped. In an inspired serio-comic visual sequence of steps, Silver must laboriously forge his way through the flea market toward his darling mother's slippery dream, unable here to advance in a simple straight line but constrained ultimately to hazard consequences, to go around various stratums of humanity, to confront life's incessant chances and bolts from the blue instead of finding his footing in his habituated refuge. Somewhat considering Carrie Fisher an exception, the performances are all great. There are genuinely very funny scenes owing largely to performances. Ron Silver is perfectly understated in a way that adds a level of dry deadpan to the humor of a scene. After Kelly Preston's hilariously timed story of promiscuity in the elevator, Silver's reaction when they reach their floor, and especially the cut to the next scene in the cafeteria, where he latches on her every word and bite over lunch, is priceless.

GBreat movie about one of my all time favorite film Icons, Garbo!!

great movie and story it works!

No one had the ability to deliver a line of dialogue like Anne Bancroft. Words loved her. This is an interesting movie, in the end, about pop culture icons and their constant return in our daily lives. Even the presence of ultra right-wing headcase Ron Silver couldn't spoil Ann Bancroft and her delivery. She was my favorite actress due mostly to her ability to deliver dialogue. I miss her terribly.

This little sleeper has been all but forgotten, except for those fans (like myself) who happened upon it and whose lives have been, forever, changed by it. As a film buff, I have appreciated Garbo Talks for all of its merits, from the basic storyline to the Mr Lumet's direction; from Cy Coleman's score to the nuanced performances of every single actor to grace this gem of a picture. As a New Yorker, I have ESPECIALLY loved this movie because I understand all the quirky weirdnesses and bizarreO characters. One living outside of Manhattan might think of this as a sketch or a farce, as a charicature or a joke; but the truth is that these are the people I see around New York every single day. I also love the location shots that show my city off and tell the world why it is such a marvelous city. Then there is the little matter of all of the great New York actors and personalities that appear in the film: a young Harvey Fierstein, an old Hermione Gingold, stage actor Howard da Silva and stage legend Dorothy Loudon, character actosr Roderick Cook and Steven Hill... And cameos by Adolph Green, Liz Smith, George Plimpton, Cy Coleman and a very special cameo by Betty Comden. This is a NEW YORK movie! Then there is this cast, this wonderful cast, of main characters played by Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher and Catharine Hicks. It is impossible NOT to fall in love with them, even the icky character played by Carrie Fisher. Impossible not to fall in love with them. This is one of the most original storylines ever created and it is executed to perfection by the artists who worked on it. I urge anyone reading this to seek out a copy of the movie on cable or on vhs. It is sadly not available on dvd; and it should be, if only for the scene when Anne Bancroft rides the construction site elevator up to the workers, yelling: "WHO WANTED A GIRL TO SIT ON THEIR FACE??!"