THE NIGHT LISTENER

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Miramax Films
Grade:B
Directed by: Patrick Stettner
Written By: Armistead Maupin, Terry Anderson, Patrick Stettner,
from Armistead Maupin's novel
Cast: Robin Williams, Toni Collette, Bobby Cannavale, Joe
Morton, John Cullum, Rory Culkin, Sandra Oh, Becky Ann
Baker, Lisa Emery, Mary Ann Plunkett
Screened at: Broadway, NYC 7/19/06
Opens: August 4, 2006

Robin Williams continues to surprise in a variety of roles. Not just a funny man, he is wisely cast in a film inspired by a story that broke fourteen years ago involving the a boy who allegedly was sexually exploited. The story was by JT LeRoy, who was exposed as a fraud. “The Night Listener” is based on a novel about the episode by Armistead Maupin and has been faithfully adapted for the screen by Patrick Stettner. Stettner, whose “The Business of Strangers” is a chamber piece about a female executive who takes up with a young woman at an airport hotel who is an expert at mind games, scores with “The Night Listener,” directed at an adult audience that thrives on deliberate pacing and Hitchcock-style theme of enigmatic identity.

The story involves Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) a radio story-teller who has become an unlikely hero to a 14-year-old boy, Pete Logand (Rory Culkin). If Gabriel, whose show is called “Noone at Night,” sounds depressed, he has a right to be: his male, gay companion who is HIV positive, Jess (Bobby Cannavle), having learned that he will live longer than he expected, moves out of their New York digs. At the same time, Ashe (Joe Morton), a publisher friend, hands Gabriel a copy of a memoir allegedly by a 14-year-old who recounts his exploitation by sadistic parents. Now under the care of a stepmother, Donna (Toni Collette), the AIDS-afflicted boy develops a telephone friendship with Gabriel. Since the boy’s voice and his stepmother’s sound similar, Gabriel is obsessed. Does this lad really exist? He travels to Wisconsin to discover the truth.

“The Night Listener” is the type of drama that has just one or two melodramatic breaks, and is therefore targeted to an audience that can appreciate a tale in which edge-of-the-seat tension takes a back row to an enigma. As the tale develops, we’re drawn into the mystery of the boy’s identity. Some in the audience will guess that the 14-year-old exists despite the implausibility that a kid that young would be a major fan of an aging teller of adult stories, while others will refuse to believe he is anything but a figment of his stepmom’s imagination.

While Robin Williams’ performance is essentially a one-note affair, Collette, who is presumably blind, runs the gamut of emotions. She is a woman flattered that a celebrated story-teller has traveled from New York to the small town of Montgomery, Wisconsin, to talk with her stepson. She is also an enraged female, dismayed that the radio host challenges her credibility. All in all, “The Night Listener” is a sedate but involving film with an effective Hitchcockian score by Peter Nashel.

Rated R. 82 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online