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'The Good Night'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

October 5, 2007

If they handed out Oscars for resourcefulness, Jake Paltrow might rate a prize for coralling sister Gwyneth, Danny DeVito, Penélope Cruz and Martin Freeman of Britain's "The Office" for his feature writing-directing debut. Nearly as award-worthy is his having finagled shooting rights on a prime block across from the Metropolitan Museum, in broad daylight.

One wishes one could feel as admiring about "The Good Night," the glum comedy that surrounds this offbeat company of bedfellows. The amiable Freeman shifts into sad-sack cruise control as Gary, a played-out rock musician who has also hit a wall with his girlfriend Dora Epstein (Paltrow, in dark-tressed camouflage). While he prostitutes his art by day writing commercial jingles, he fulfills his romantic needs each evening by conjuring a fantasy woman (Cruz) in his dreams.

As Gary's dream life expands in inverse proportion to the diminishing rewards of his relationship, he solicits sympathy and advice from his philandering ex-bandmate Paul (a rudely funny Simon Pegg) and Mel (DeVito) a self-styled dream consultant from Astoria, by way of Berkeley.

On paper, at least, the scenario carries the seeds of a latter-day Rock and Doris romantic comedy. But Jake Paltrow is in an exceptionally bitter frame of mind: "The Good Night" is an unflattering depiction of the cruel combativeness with which malcontent women go at wounded men like Gary.

One can't help but wonder if the filmmaker is working through some unresolved sibling issues from childhood in casting his sister as Dora, who emerges as a shrill, castrating sourpuss whose stymied bedroom routine cannot begin to explain the knee-jerk callousness with which she treats Gary. Not until the film's inexplicable finale do we get a glimmer of Dora's vanquished inner light and humanity; would that the actress had thrown familial caution to the wind and said, "Jake, I know it's probably a good stretch for my career to be playing an emasculating Jewish pill, but could you write in just one, eensy-weensy grace note of compassion?"

The men come off markedly better. DeVito's new-age flim-flammery is redeemed by self-awareness and humility, while Paul's sundry insensitivities are offset by cheeky humor and a fundamental loyalty to his depressed amigo. "The Good Night" has flashes of bookish wit, but never quite recovers from the metronomic monotony of its first half, which tick-tocks between scenes of Paltrow braying and Cruz voguing.

THE GOOD NIGHT (R). For his feature directing debut, Jake Paltrow offers up a depressive comedy about a depressive man. Martin Freeman stars as a former rock musician whose love life is as compromised as his career. Gwyneth Paltrow is his shrewish girlfriend, Penélope Cruz the less-than-splendiferous girl of his dreams. Simon Pegg and Danny DeVito provide the occasional blast of comic helium, but mostly the film trudges along with a sing-songy rhythm. 1:33 (language and some sexual content). At Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Angelika Film Center, Manhattan