READ MORE: Q&A: The Good Night star Gwyneth Paltrow

PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 10/9/07)

In the opening moments of director Jake Paltrow's funny and moving debut film The Good Night, it becomes apparent that Gary, a 34-year-old, slightly chubby, burnt-out jingle writer, is in very serious trouble — his friends are speaking about him in the past tense. Played with pitch-perfect sad bewilderment by English comedian Martin Freeman (Shaun of the Dead, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Gary is a former British pop star, now being discussed in a "rockumentary"-style video by his friends.

When we do meet Gary, he is brushing his teeth in tense silence with his wife, Dora (played by the director's sister, Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow — here as an almost unrecognizably drab brunette), in the darkly lit and claustrophobic high-rise apartment that they share. Apparently neither Gary nor Dora are aware that their relationship is over, and in one of the film's funniest and most painfully awkward scenes, they climb into their bed, turn out the lights, and wait a few moments in silence before speaking to each other in the dark. "Love you," Dora says unenthusiastically. "Love you, too," Gary sighs.

Under pressure in his marriage and in his career, Gary begins to have intense, vivid dreams about a beautiful woman named Anna (Penelope Cruz). Anna either speaks to Gary telepathically (putting subtitles to great use) or in a language only he can understand, and her vigorous flirting works both as a visual contrast to Gary's boring life with Dora and as a reminder that she is entirely a figment of his emotionally needy imagination. Cruz seems to be good-naturedly game for anything, even, at one point, appearing sans pants while begging Gary, "Will you make love to me? All day long? Even when it hurts?" in one of Gary's most comically divorced-from-reality fantasies.

Director Paltrow creates indelible images with Cruz as his centerpiece — whether posing on the beach or lounging in an empty and glamorous bachelor pad. These dream scenes are vibrant, visually arresting, and accompanied by a rich, orchestral score. The sequences are then purposefully intercut with moments from Gary and Dora's depressing home life that are not scored and shot in a grainy, low-budget style with a dark-green and yellow palette.

In contrast to the glamorous Anna, Dora is first shown tending to her dental hygiene — brushing, flossing, spitting out toothpaste, and adjusting her retainer — in a dreary apartment full of overflowing clothes hampers and dripping humidifiers. Paltrow turns in a confident performance, never allowing Dora to cross over from frustrated to nagging wife. But Freeman really holds the movie together with his seemingly effortless ability to underplay every scene, while simultaneously filling the frame with an inexplicably riveting underdog charm.

For all of its strengths, the film does have some major flaws: A lengthy and poorly written subplot featuring Danny DeVito as a guru of lucid dreaming should have been jettisoned from the film entirely. Likewise, the normally entertaining Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) uncharacteristically overacts as Gary's sidekick Paul, a role the director seems to have included as "comic relief."

This subtle script, however, is already deeply humorous without the forced additions. In fact, small details (Gary reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict in bed, for instance) pay off even more upon reflection.

— John Morgan