Gary ( Martin Freeman ) is a young musician who was once a member of — and possibly the musical intelligence behind — a moderately well-known rock band, but that's over. Now he is reduced to writing commercial jingles for his more successful ex-bandmate, Paul ( Simon Pegg ), who is a partner in a big advertising agency. Gary is artistically frustrated and depressed because he has a nagging, hypercritical girlfriend named Dora ( Gwyneth Paltrow ) who wants him to be more of a go-getter, like Paul.
After dreaming of a beautiful stranger named Anna (Penelope Cruz) who is his idea — and pretty much any man's idea — of romantic and sexual perfection, Gary seeks to take up permanent residence in his dreams by seeking out Mel (Danny DeVito), a self-proclaimed expert on what he calls "lucid dreaming." The film, which is written and directed by Ms. Paltrow 's younger brother, Jake Paltrow, is not as bad as it sounds.
In fact, in some ways it is quite good. Much of the writing is sharp and witty, and Mr. Paltrow is blessed with a terrific cast whose sense of comic timing adds appreciably to the laugh total.
It is possible to enjoy almost everything about the movie except for its meaning. Or rather its lack of meaning. Ultimately, Mr.
Paltrow allows his dream world to fight the real world to a standstill, as if Gary's preference for living in his dreams really could be something other than a childish delusion and a moral defection. For a long time, powerful voices have been insisting on the rights of artistic fantasies to be treated on equal terms with artistic representations of reality. In the modish critical language of today, we are not supposed to "privilege" reality over fantasy.
The reasoning seems to be that since there is no reality anyway (or if there is it is unknowable), reality has no right snobbishly to look down its nose at fantasy as something inferior. Both are just somebody's version of the truth.
News RSS