Movie Review: UK theaters The Night Listener

Movies Reviews

By Evrim Ersoy Sep 13, 2006, 11:02 GMT

Patrick Stettner’s last film ‘Business Of Strangers’ was a marvellous film, a little chamber piece that relied on the strength of its’ writing and the abilities of its’ actors’ more than any extreme set pieces or plot twists. His direction was well handled, especially for a debut, and contained light touches that could be considered almost Mamet-esque.

However none of this seems to have filtered through to his second film ‘The Night Listener’: a mess so sprawling that even this reviewer had trouble keeping a straight face all the way through it. (Which says a lot really considering the last disaster that had to be taken seriously was ‘Broken’ by Adam Mason)The basic premise of the film concerns Gabriel Noone (played with horrid, turgid expressions by Robin Williams), a writer and radio personality, whose relationship with his boyfriend is on the rocks. Williams here does another ‘Bicetennial Man’ wildly missing the mark and though sometimes the rest of the cast can bring his performance to touch the ground, unfortunately there is no such luck here.Anyway, Mr. Noone is given a manuscript by his publisher which has been written by a young boy who unfortunately has endured an enormous amount of child abuse. Touched by the manuscript, Mr.Noone contacts the boy and a friendship of sorts ensues. However a sinister suggestion by his ex throws the whole affair into disarray.Does the boy really exist? Or is it just a fictional character invented by the ‘social worker’ (played by Toni Collette) in order to keep Noone interested?Reading back on the synopsis, the plot sounds fairly interesting however the film is so inept at creating anything resembling a plot past the basics that the whole thing comes tumbling down. Even though the script is based on Amistead Maupin’s novel by the same name, it displays an extraordinary amount of stupidity, which B-movies manage to avoid these days. There are plot holes so large that an elbow could fit through them and the ending seems geared towards the whole M. Night Shymalayan crowd.The film’s main problem lies with the script. An indecisive approach makes this neither a good old-fashioned is he or isn’t he thriller nor an interesting and deep character based drama. So the actors are very much forced to mug their way through very abrupt, unbelievable lines as well as some totally stupid action. Is there no way that Gabriel Noone could track Toni Collette’s social worker through the records? How can the police get away with such brutality? And why did I just waste 90 minutes of my life on such crap? These are some of the questions that you are bound to encounter as you leave the cinema.There’s also the issue of Robin Williams’s homosexuality…can the characterization been made any more connect-the-dots or grotesque? It seems like such an added aspect of his personality for the sake of making him a bit of an outsider that it almost ends up offending the viewers. In Amistead Maupin’s novels, the homosexuality of the characters is certainly larger than life however it also feels extremely real. Translating this onto the silver screen, fails atrociously.A few good points abound: Sandra Oh is marvellous and wasted in a small role. The cinematography has a drabness about it that ends up almost looking beautiful. And…that’s it. Nothing else really.What remains for this reviewer is to advise avoiding this mess and watching the adaptation of one of Maupin’s other novels. Not only will it be a time better spent but it will also discourage Hollywood from churning out crap like this.

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Movie Review: UK theaters The Night Listener

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