Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In the hands of a gifted writer like Armistead Maupin, this bizarre yarn is another engaging "tale of the City." Robin Williams is good as the genial and sensitive radio call-in host, who comes to believe a tragic story about a young boy in recovery from a vicious assault. But is there anything truthful about the story? As indicated in the film, "The Night Listener" draws upon medical science for a case of "factitious disorder." The psychological principle of cognitive dissonance describes a lie in which the individual has come to believe that it is real. In the case of this film, one character is clearly desperately seeking attention.In one of the most intriguing lines in the film, Williams's character Gabriel states on his talk show that "Donna and I are more alike than not." But the film portrays just the opposite in the caring, sensitive Gabriel, who is pitted against the monomaniacal Donna, as credibly performed by Toni Colette.The film is really about the war of wills between Gabriell, pursuing the truth about little Pete, and Donna's desperate attempt to keep her fictitious story alive. But there was an inherent dishonesty in the film's early scenes depicting little Pete, as played by actor Rory Culkin. The film was intentionally deceiving the audience down to the last detail of a town named Montgomery, Wisconsin (none exists) and the zip code on the letter received by Gabe (the wrong zip for Wisconsin).Some of the supporting roles, such as the mean-spirited residents of the small Wisconsin town, stretched credibility. And some of the dialogue seemed too pat and simplistic. Lines such as "Real isn't how you are made; it's the thing that happens to you" were weak arguments about the conflict of heredity versus environment.Still, this was a compelling film that raised the essential question about the "factitious disorder. " While this syndrome may not be prevalent to the degree that it is portrayed in the character of Donna, it may it may be more commonplace than we think.

Robin Williams is "The Night Listener" in this 2006 film, based on an incident that Armistad Maupin wrote a novel about that apparently happened to him. Williams plays Gabriel No one, who does a radio show called "Noone at Night." He's having a hard time, not only professionally but personally. His lover (Bobby Cannavale) has moved out after 8 years and he has writer's block as far as material for his show.A book agent (Joe Morton) gives Gabriel that galley of a book about to be published. It's written by a 14-year-old boy named Pete (Rory Culkin) about the horrific sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his parents and his parents' friends. He is now living with a social worker (Toni Collette) and the two of them are in hiding. Pete is dying of AIDS. Gabriel forms a friendship with the boy over the phone. All is well until Gabriel's ex-boyfriend thinks there is a similarity between the voices of the social worker and Pete.People often complain about a film being too long; "The Night Listener" is too short. I felt as if I missed the first fifteen minutes as I watched the beginning. Also, Williams, a good actor, goes a little too inward; Gabriel needs a little more outward showing of mood.There are several stunning features of this film: the actual story, which had the potential of making this a great film rather than just a good one; the second is the performance of Toni Collette, a truly great actress who deserves to be up there with Meryl Streep. She has two problems keeping her from superstardom - she doesn't look like a star and she loses herself so totally in her characters that she's not identifiable as a star personality. But what an actress. Her portrayal of Donna, the social worker, is sensational. The third feature is the wonderful atmosphere created when Gabriel goes to Wisconsin to find Donna and Pete - dark, unfriendly, filled with suspense.Despite some problems, this is a movie that will really hold your interest. Unfortunately, while it is well directed, it's not brilliantly directed and the script needed a little tightening. A shame - this story is worth better treatment.

The Night Listener is essentially quite straightforward: a study in obsession and loneliness. The two protagonists are almost mirror images of each other, one an ageing homosexual writer and the other an attention-seeking fantasist. It was billed, by some, as a thriller, and consequently criticised for not being very thrilling, not being very mysterious and, finally, not really having a story. Certainly, there is no resolution to 'the story' as such, but then whether of not the young boy existed is not relevant. What is relevant is that the storyteller, whose younger lover has left him, desperately wants there to be a boy, desperately wants to have a son. The other obsessive, a woman who apparently invents the boy to get attention, will do anything to keep the fiction going. The film plays trick a little viewer and I cannot make up my mind whether it does so fairly or not. So, for example, we are shown the fictional boy talking to the storyteller on the phone and then handing the receiver to the obsessive woman. So, it would seem, and do the film would have us believe, he really did exist. Yet he didn't: he really is just a vehicle for the obsessive to get the attention she craves. A final scene confirms it: at the end of the film she has moved to another town to start a new life, is no longer blind and the fictional boy in her life is no longer the victim of paedophile parents, but has lost a leg. Finally, of course, it doesn't matter whether or not the film plays fair. Its essence is to portray the private despair of an essentially decent man whom life is slowly but surely passing by. If you read other reviews, you will hear it claimed that The Night Listener is a cracking thriller or, alternatively, not worth a minute of the running time. Both views are wrong, but more to the point mistake, The Night Listener is a gentle film in which the storyteller finds some sort of peace, if only an acceptance that he is getting older and that life is not always as accommodating as we fondly wish. Furthermore, the film is beautifully shot in dark browns of different hues, in shadows, at night. Daylight and light generally play no part in the storyteller's world. Very little is distinct, and ironically the only real understanding and openness comes from two younger characters who are sceptical of the boys existence from the start. This is a slow-moving, in many ways uneventful film which succeeds because it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is: an examination of obsession and loneliness. If you like a certain kind of film, you will like it. Williams is very good in portraying the storyteller's loneliness and Toni Collette also turns in a good performance. If you want a thriller, forget it. There is so much more to this film than that.

I personally like Robin Williams, and will watch almost anything with him in it, that was obviously the case here, I didn't know what to expect. Basically late night radio host Gabriel No one (Williams) has his male lover needing space, so while he is gone he likes to talk to the young writer of a new manuscript, fourteen-year-old Pete D. Logand (Signs' Rory Culkin). Pete is very ill, and the only contact Gabriel has with him is through his blind adoptive mother Donna D. Logand (Toni Collette), but this relationship is very unsettling without Peter himself on the phone. Gabriel becomes suspicious of Donna, so he goes to find and confront Donna and Peter, and this is unsuccessful, we are wondering if Peter even really existed. Also starring Bobby Cannavale as Jess, Terminator 2's Joe Morton as Ashe, John Cullum as Pap No one and Bean's Sandra Oh as Anna. The story doesn't make all that much sense, and to be honest it isn't interesting enough for you to care about, even being based on real events. Adequate!