The Good Night: Critic Reviews

The Good Night doesn't quite comfortably synthesize all the notions writer-director Jake Paltrow wants to play with in his feature debut. But the filmmaker's got good taste -- and luck -- in casting.

The comedy of male midlife angst dates back at least to The Seven-Year Itch, when it was sweet and innocent. Each time it is recycled, it gets more sour and joyless.

A mish-mash of secondhand ideas, with some real misfires.

Director Jake Paltrow's feature debut has all the hallmarks of an earnest young man's feature debut, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing, I can only imagine that it fit Sundance like a fingerless glove when it had its premiere there.

As thin and wispy as a dream you can't quite remember in the morning.

The Good Night takes familiar (embarrassingly familiar) male-angst material and makes it go loop-de-loop, so that the jokes hit you from behind and underneath while the bleakness smacks you in the face.

Jake Paltrow's first feature delves assuredly into the mind of a lost soul who literally encounters the woman of his dreams.

The sort of movie you forget even as you're watching it.

There is a fine idea for a romantic comedy in Jake Paltrow's The Good Night but the writer-director, in his debut feature, never develops it much beyond the idea stage.

Flawed, but with enough interest to suggest Jake Paltrow may be one to keep an eye out for in future.

...a low-key yet consistently engaging effort...

This sleepyhead Prince Charming is in for a rude awakening when the choosy, chain smoking Anna, actual female that she is, finds him an annoying loser, and at best undesirable. Au revoir, unconditional love. Someone wake me when it's over.

The Good Night is a superlative feature film from Jake Paltrow; a fulfilling buffet of aches and pains from the discontented, poured into an amusing, uneasy comedic fantasy that barely misses a step.

Writer-director Jake Paltrow's (yes, brother of Gwennie) debut feature is exquisitely romantic, painful, and riotous; everyone's lonely and going about it wrong.

Skimming through comedy, satire and cautionary tale, it's all somewhat vague - exasperatingly so when suggestive artiness seems to have been intended. Not as clever as it thinks.

Sadly not the stuff of dreams.

Such a big grey blanket of misery it should have been called "Eternal Cloud Cover".

An all-star cast and Pegg's larger-than-life turn can't stop this offbeat yarn being a bit of a snooze.

What comedy there is fails to ignite and the romance is stillborn since we don't care who sleeps with whom or whether they do it in real life or the dream world.

Despite some wry humour, the miscast leads and sour tone are as out of place in this Woody Allen landscape as Gwyneth's silly wig.

As a comedy of male delusion, Night seems to shrink from its flimsy dramatic subtexts; as a probing of dream and reality in love, its pretensions to depth suggest a neutered comedic courage: Woody Allen-lite.

If the hero has trouble dozing off, that's not a problem which will affect many viewers of this movie.