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The Good Night, Jake Paltrow's full-length directorial debut, is an exercise in patience. Namely, the viewer's patience to last through the entire film without saying "This is too fucking boring" and leaving.

The story, what little there is, revolves around Gary (Martin Freeman), a former rock star who has been reduced to writing commercial jingles. Gary is stuck in a dead-end relationship, having been reduced to masturbating in the morning about the girl who appears in his dream (Penelope Cruz) while slowly drifting farther and farther away from his girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow). His vivid fantasies spark the interest of Paul (Simon Pegg),Gary's best friend who tends to spend a lot of his time fantasizing about women, especially those that aren't his girlfriend, and Mel (Danny Devito), an amateur "Lucid Dream" guru who also happens to work a countless number of other part-time jobs. Paul wants to know more about the fantasies so he can have his own, while Mel sees Gary as very similar to himself, and hopes that he can turn Gary away from the loneliness that having only dream relationships leads to.

Unfortunately, Paltrow's writing and directing leave a lot to be desired. The main idea is strong, but the movie's mix of real-life and dreams leaves little room for story development. Thus, the only thing we have to hang onto are the characters. This is fine in movies with well developed and interesting characters, but The Good Night's characters are generally flat, unlikeable, and unintersting. Gary is your normal underachiever, still hanging onto dreams and relationships that have long since interested him. Paul is a typical sex-craved best friend. Dora, Gary's girlfriend, doesn't give any reason as to why Gary held onto the relationship as long as he did. And Anna, Gary's dream girl, tends to be discussed only as a sex-fantasy.

With no plot and uninteresting characters, The Good Night is a tedious exercise in not being able to balance experimental and mainstream film. Paltrow has some ambitious ideas, but doesn't know what to do with them. Even when the "twist" ending comes along, with the best five minutes of the film being the last five, the damage has already been done. It's hard to recommend someone sit through 85 minutes of boredom for 5 minutes of enjoyment at the very end.

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Copyright 2008 Benjamin Wood