EARS AND FEARS

Opening in theaters on August 4:

The Night Listener
Grade: B+

Fans of Armistead Maupin’s cheery Tales of the City series may be surprised to learn that the legendary gay author has a dark side. Inspired by events from his own life, his 2000 novel The Night Listener is a psychological thriller about a talk show host who strikes up a telephone friendship with a young male pedophilia victim who may or may not exist. Disturbing and complex, it’s a far cry from the bubbly queer shenanigans on Barbary Lane.
Patrick Stettner (The Business of Strangers) directed the new film adaptation of The Night Listener and collaborated with Maupin on the screenplay. After a sluggish start, the tense and unpredictable plot barrels along toward an inconclusive, but satisfying, ending.
The film’s biggest commercial draw doubles as its biggest artistic weakness. Some mainstream viewers will undoubtedly take a chance on this risky indie film because it stars Robin Williams. Though he’s obviously adept at comedy and he’s done well in seriocomic films like The World According to Garp and Good Will Hunting, flat-out drama is not his forte (House of D, anyone?)
I’d like to sing his praises for playing an unstereotypical gay role in The Night Listener, but his acting is so overearnest and bland that his character resembles a cardboard box more than an allegedly witty radio personality.
Stettner stages such a tightly woven drama, however, that Williams’ lackluster performance is more like a dull toothache than an impassable roadblock.
Williams plays Gabriel Noone, a radio personality in the process of breaking up with his longtime boyfriend. When a colleague gives him a book by a young boy, Gabriel begins a phone correspondence with the precocious author. Threatened by his friends’ suggestion that the whole situation is a hoax, he tries to determine if the boy really exists, or if he is just a figment of his adoptive mother’s imagination.
Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) and beefcakey Bobby Cannavale (Will & Grace) are compelling in supporting roles, but Toni Collette is the real standout as the troubled adoptive mother who may or may not be blind and crazy. Alternately brittle and tough, her inspired performance is completely convincing and moving, and it deserves an Oscar nod.