The Good Night

Sony Pictures - Sony Pictures

Release date: 2008-04-01
DVD
Actors: Keith Allen, Danny DeVito, Kate Harper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Stephen Graham

Color, Comedy, Drama, English, Existential Crisis, Farm Life, Feature, Feature Film-drama, Intimate, Italian, Movie, Musician's Life, Profanity, Quirky, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Sexual Situations, UK, USA, Understated

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The Good Night

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"The Good Night" opens with one Michel Gondry-like interesting premise; a former pop singer Gary (Martin Freeman), now writing commercial jingles for a living, starts to see his "dream girl" while he is sleeping. She is Anna (Penelope Cruz), literally a perfect girl, or that's what he thinks. While living with his girlfriend Dora (Gwyneth Paltrow), he cannot forget his fantasy girl and finds himself more and more attracted to her. And one day Anna shows up before him, in real life, in the form of a model Melody (Penelope Cruz).

Written and directed Jake Paltrow (Gwyneth's brother, his first feature film), "The Good Night" has the right ingredients to make a great film. Martin Freeman is perfectly cast as the obsessive protagonist facing mid-life crisis. The names here including Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny DeVito (as "sleep specialist"), Simon Pegg and Michael Gambon (cameo) are surely impressive.

But with the film's inconsistent narrative (with its strange "documentary" section with Jarvis Cocker), "The Good Night" fails to develop its story. The film doesn't have any deep insights about our fantasy or dreams and that is fine with me (though that will help). Still most of the characters are not likable (I really like Simon Pegg, but his character was so annoying here). And when the film's story and characters stop developing at the initial stage until the final chapter (that has one unexpected event), something is wrong with it.

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The Good Night

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It's pretty obvious that first-time director/screenwriter Jake Paltrow was heavily inspired by Michel Gondry's surreal, off-kilter work in The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind in making this downbeat 2007 dramedy. Barely in theaters before heading right to DVD, the film works on an intriguing (albeit unoriginal) premise but is then undermined by a muddy execution and unlikable characters despite some nice visuals. The plot concerns put-upon Gary, a TV commercial jingle writer who was once an `80's Britpop star. His professional life has become a drudge as he begrudgingly works with his best pal and former bandmate Paul, who has sold his soul to become a successful advertising executive. Meanwhile, life at home is no picnic since Gary has to suffer from the constant passive-aggressive derision of his frumpy, needling girlfriend Dora.

Into this emotional void, Gary starts to have vivid dreams of a beautiful fantasy woman named Anna, who turns out to have a basis in reality. It's no wonder that Gary seeks the counsel of a "lucid dreaming" expert from New Jersey named Mel who helps him find ways to elongate the dreams for fear of having them evaporate entirely. Once all this is all established, Paltrow lets the film flail around in a series of frustrating scenes that have Gary turning more and more into an emotional zombie. Moreover, the marked contrast between Dora and Anna comes across as overstated with the result being complete indifference toward both women. Paltrow also uses a framing device of documentary-like testimonials from colleagues in Gary's past, a technique that doesn't make sense until the abrupt ending. None of the principal actors are terribly remarkable here except Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) who brings a much-needed energetic brio to the comically unsavory role of Paul. His cutting scenes with Gary are the best the movie offers.

As Gary, Martin Freeman (BBC's The Office, Breaking and Entering) is likeably dweeby at first, though he doesn't make credible his past as a debauched rock star. Danny DeVito merely plays a plot device in his customary matter and not much more as Mel. No matter how gorgeous she is (and she truly is in this film), Penélope Cruz is given short shrift by the script, so much so that her character remains incoherent and incomplete. But ironically, a worse fate befalls the filmmaker's famous sister Gwyneth, who has been so deglamorized as Dora as to render her character nearly unsalvageable. Granted there are some funny, off-the-cuff bits like Dora reacting to Gary's maniacal installation of foam over the bedroom windows by asking if it comes in white or Gary inexplicably reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iraq in bed, but there isn't enough such cleverness to sustain the film. At 93 minutes, it actually feels overlong. The 2008 DVD provides a rather inchoate commentary from Jake Paltrow that is not very insightful.

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