Gary (Martin Freeman) used to be a pop star. Now he writes advertising jingles, lives in tedium with girlfriend Dora (Gwyneth Paltrow), and envies the growing professional and romantic success of former band mate Paul (Simon Pegg). It’s no surprise when the beautiful, sensuous Anna (Penélope Cruz) blesses his dreamscape one night – and returns in an even more titillating outfit the next – that he begins to question the value of waking up. Soon Gary turns his back on reality in favour of the ambrosial horizons of his dreams.
The fine line between truth and fantasy is hardly a novel one to draw. Whether in Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Gondry’s solo effort The Science of Sleep, the surrealist visual seam offered by visits to the unconscious has been richly mined. Nestled as it is in this fashionable oeuvre, Jake Paltrow’s feature film debut doesn’t sound half bad. And it’s not half bad – it’s all bad.
God knows what Gary’s pop lyrics were like because his imagination sucks; visually, the beach setting of his fantasies is as stale and flat as his relationship with Dora. Worse still is the sight of a disembodied Cruz floating through the solar system, and later on a lacklustre sea shore, begging Gary to make love to her.
After wondering why you bothered, you’ll wonder why they did. And then you’ll cast The Good Night to the neglected depths of your unconscious, where it belongs.
