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August 04, 2006
The Night Listener
(out of four)
The Night Listener begins where The Break-Up leaves off — with a broken relationship and the distant promise of reconciliation — only this time, the couple in question aren't Hollywood's most photogenic young stars. In fact, they're both men (Robin Williams and Bobby Cannavale) struggling to move on after the collapse of their 10-year relationship.
The hook — and it's a good one — is that Williams' character, radio host Gabriel Noone, takes under his wing a traumatized young writer named Pete, whose shocking memoir helps Noone shift focus away from his own depression. But as Noone gets increasingly invested in the kid's life, his ex-lover begins to suspect a hoax: Does the mysterious Pete, with whom Noone communicates only by phone and mail, really exist? And if so, why does his voice sound so much like that of his guardian, Donna (Toni Collette)?
Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Armistead Maupin, The Night Listener marks a serious turn for the storyteller best known for his comparatively upbeat Tales of the City serial. In 1992, Maupin was himself suckered by a grown woman posing as the 14-year-old author of Rock and a Hard Place, an intensely personal (now dubious) AIDS memoir. Writing The Night Listener became a form of pseudo-therapy for Maupin (who also co-wrote the screenplay with his ex, Terry Anderson, and director Patrick Stettner).
The recent literary scandal involving discredited novelist JT LeRoy — a publicity-shy persona invented by writer Laura Albert — suggests that Maupin's experience was not an isolated case. It also suggests that there's a juicy, relevant movie to be fashioned from Maupin's novel, one that speaks directly to our culture's thirst for fame. Yet The Night Listener feels startlingly pedestrian.
Though packaged as a nail-biting thriller, the movie is really just one long downer, its insights marred by clumsy storytelling and its overly earnest star. This latest chapter in Hollywood's most manic-depressive career finds the ever-penitent Williams plunging ever further into potential wrist-slitting territory. It's a good performance, and yet no fun for fans of the gifted comic actor -- which means if you're not absolutely smitten with Williams' "serious actor" abilities, the film could come as a mild form of torture.
What's most frustrating about Stettner's movie is that it approaches its characters' psychology obliquely, whereas the novel reads like a still-open wound. Williams clearly "went there" to deliver his performance, as did Collette, but audiences must supply their own insights to make sense of the emotions on display. That leaves us with a slow, unsatisfying mystery. The real question isn't whether the child really exists (about which the movie plays it coy), but why a woman might need to create such a character in the first place. Stettner and Maupin aren't telling — and the film's coda, which tries to wrap everything up in a neat pop-psychology bow, proves as unilluminating as it is annoying.
[as featured in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
Posted by Peter Debruge on