General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Burglar

Burglar is a 1987 American comedy-mystery film directed by Hugh Wilson, starring Whoopi Goldberg as Bernice "Bernie" Rhodenbarr, a San Francisco bookstore owner who works as a cat burglar on the side and is framed for murder. It was released on 20 March 1987 by Warner Bros., rated R, with a listed running time of 102 minutes.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	20 March 1987, wide release on 1,019 screens by Warner Bros.¹^•²
Source	Based on the 1978 novel The Burglar in the Closet by Lawrence Block, the second in his comic mystery Burglar series¹
Lead cast	Whoopi Goldberg (Bernice "Bernie" Rhodenbarr), Bobcat Goldthwait (Carl Hefler), G.W. Bailey (Ray Kirschman), Lesley Ann Warren (Dr. Cynthia Sheldrake), John Goodman (Detective Nyswander)¹
Production	Principal photography began 21 July 1986 in San Francisco; twelve-week schedule and a $12.5 million budget¹
Box office	$16,337,355 domestic gross; $4,509,754 opening weekend³
Reception	27% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 11 reviews; 39% audience score⁴
Studio milestone	First live-action feature film for the Toronto-based animation company Nelvana¹

Spoilers

Plot

In San Francisco, ex-convict Bernice "Bernie" Rhodenbarr runs a used bookstore on Haight Street but still does occasional burglaries because the crooked policeman Ray Kirschman (G.W. Bailey) is blackmailing her. After she steals a valuable stamp, Kirschman tells her that the man who commissioned the job died the night before, so there will be no payout. A pawnbroker connects her with a dentist who hires her to break into her ex-husband's house and steal back jewelry; a murder occurs during the job and Bernie is the only suspect, so she and her sidekick Carl (Bobcat Goldthwait) must clear her name.¹^•⁴

Casting and production

The lead changed hands. Bruce Willis was originally signed to play Bernie Rhodenbarr, with Whoopi Goldberg set to play his sidekick and neighbor Carolyn. When Willis dropped out, Goldberg moved up to the lead, and the character became "Bernie," short for Bernice rather than Bernard. Goldberg pushed for her friend, the comic Bobcat Goldthwait, to be cast as the sidekick, whose name was changed to Carl.¹

In May 1986 the Los Angeles Times reported that Goldberg's character would be a lesbian, which the paper described as one of the first times a movie had featured a homosexual lead character; a week later it ran a correction explaining that Goldberg's character was heterosexual and that Goldthwait's sidekick character was gay.¹

Nelvana's first live-action film. The Toronto-based production company Nelvana Limited, known for animated films and television shows, optioned the Burglar books in 1984 hoping to build a movie franchise. Burglar was its first live-action feature.¹

Principal photography began on 21 July 1986 in San Francisco on a twelve-week schedule with a $12.5 million budget. When Goldberg injured her leg, tearing ligaments as she attempted to halt a car that had rolled from its parking spot on a steeply sloped driveway, filming was halted for a number of days; it was set to pick up again on 25 August 1986.¹

Reception

The film opened on 20 March 1987 on 1,019 screens and earned $8.8 million in its first ten days.¹ Its domestic gross finished at $16,337,355 against the $12.5 million budget, with an opening weekend of $4,509,754, 27.6 percent of the total.³^•²

Critics were negative. Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013 and winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, called it "a witless, hapless exercise in the wrong way to package Goldberg," arguing that nothing in the film depended on her sex, race, or personality and that her role could have been played by a man without a rewrite.⁵ Michael Wilmington in the Los Angeles Times called it "a comedy that doesn't make you laugh, a mystery that doesn't make sense and a thriller without thrills."⁶ Richard Harrington in The Washington Post wrote that the story line was unfocused and that a trio of writers, including director Hugh Wilson, borrowed disparate elements from the original Block books, leaving the film incoherent.⁷ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 27 percent from 11 critics and 39 percent from audiences.⁴

The author's view

Lawrence Block, the crime writer who created Bernie Rhodenbarr, was dismissive of the adaptation. In a 2014 Film Comment interview he confirmed the film was the Bernie Rhodenbarr adaptation and said "the casting was the least of its sins, I've always felt. It didn't have much to do with the book, but you could make a movie with Whoopi playing the lead." He added a jab at the writer-director, saying "The writer/director gave us Police Academy one through 18, or whatever."⁸ In a separate interview he recalled that readers who enjoyed the book were outraged that Bernie Rhodenbarr, a white male, was played by Goldberg, a black woman, but said "the funny thing is that the film almost worked."⁹ Block had written five Bernie Rhodenbarr books by the time the picture was made.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1980s films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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