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Struggling songwriter Gary (Martin Freeman) becomes fixated with his fantasy girl, played by Penelope Cruz in The Good Night |
Fantasising Freeman has got Penelope blues
THE GOOD NIGHT
Directed by Jake Paltrow
Certificate 15
OUR screens seem full of oddball movies these days, and now we have something really off the wall to add to the list.
If there is such a thing as virtual-reality romance then this is it, courtesy of Jake Paltrow (younger brother of Gwyneth) who wrote the screenplay as well as directing.
Struggling songwriter Gary (Martin Freeman, who left his own considerable footprint in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) is having a bad time. His marriage has gone sour, and his TV jingles are all wrong for the products. “Make it bad,” shouts the producer in the recording studio. “Bad is good!”
Somehow Gary has slipped into the slow lane, while all his friends on the New York circuit are carving out successful careers, particularly his best friend Paul (a scene-stealing performance from Simon Pegg).
Then out of the blue comes the girl of his dreams (Penelope Cruz), materialising from nowhere, a raven-haired beauty in high heels and a white sable on a windswept beach inviting him to make love to her. He’s fantasising, of course, but she takes over his life, promising him every sexual experience he ever craved.
“You’ve got problems,” shouts his long-suffering wife (Gwyneth Paltrow, keeping it in the family and unrecognisable in a chestnut wig down to her waist), as she catches him misbehaving – is that the polite word for it? – in front of the bathroom mirror at two in the morning. Yes, you could say that.
In desperation Gary enrols with a “professor of lucid dreaming” (Danny De Vito) to get him over his fixation. It doesn’t work. The dream girl appears in real life as a fashion model who never stops talking.
How it all works out makes for an amusing enough slice of escapism, even if our suspension of disbelief is left hanging by a thread. |
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