'The Good Night.' Comedy about a dullard musician who looks for love in his dreams. With Martin Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Penelope Cruz.
Director: Jake Paltrow (1:33). R: Language, sexual content. At the Angelika and the Lincoln Plaza.
As thin and wispy as a dream you can't quite remember in the morning, writer-director Jake Paltrow's "The Good Night" wastes the ample comedy talent of Martin Freeman, turns his famous sister Gwyneth into a shrew, and makes you wish Danny DeVito had directed the movie instead of acting in it. At the same time, Paltrow blows a pretty good premise: What if you fall in love with a girl in your dreams and then meet her in real life? The answer will be clear before you actually get to that moment, and the getting there is tedious business with some very tedious people.
Freeman, a star of the BBC version of "The Office," plays studio keyboardist Gary, and Gwyneth Paltrow is his nagging, understandably bored girlfriend, Dora. Their stalled relationship consists of arguments and rote "I love yous" and "Me toos" at bedtime, after which Gary slips into dreamland hoping for better. When a drop-dead beauty named Anna (Penelope Cruz in her sexiest wardrobe since "Woman on Top") shows up in his nocturnal musings, smothering him with passion, he becomes obsessed with taking control of his dreams - better to live out a romantic fantasy with Anna than testy reality with Dora.
The movie is framed as a mock documentary with Gary's ex-associates and ex-girlfriend talking about him in the past tense. None of this material is funny or illuminating, and seems to have survived the editor's scalpel merely to flesh out the short running time. There are a few giggles along the way - mostly provided by Gary's vulgar, womanizing boss (Simon Pegg) - while DeVito, who has directed one classic comedy ("The War of the Roses"), is stuck in the going-nowhere role of Gary's dream coach.
Jake Paltrow's biggest rookie mistake is in abbreviating his payoff sequence, when Gary meets the supermodel Melodia, who is identical to Anna. That she can't possibly be the idealized lover from his dreams is rich with comic possibilities. But Paltrow moves so fast through this section that you can't even be sure their meeting was real.
News RSS