The Good Night.

"Jake Paltrow (father Bruce, mother Blythe Danner, sister Gwyneth) is another showbiz-royalty kid who thinks he's a screenwriter and director, and, while I resent him for his overprivileged existence, I think he might be, too," grants David Edelstein. "His comedy 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. Painful, yes - but that's part of the masochistic fun."

Also in New York, Emily Nussbaum hangs a while with the Paltrows.

Updated through 10/5.

"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 earlier this year," writes Michelle Orange in the Voice.

"The film has some entertaining bits (particularly the scenes with Danny DeVito as a sad midget who prefers devoting himself to the world of dreams over struggling futilely against a compassionless reality)," writes Kate Folk in the L Magazine. "However, Night's core message (some permutation of 'You don't know what you've got till it's gone') is nauseatingly trite."

"There's no evading the gracelessness of Good Night," warns Nick Schager at Slant.

At Movie City News, Noah Forrest revisits past dreams in the movies.

Update, 10/5: "The kind of humor in which The Good Night traffics is the sort that produces smirks of uncomfortable recognition, but hardly any laughter," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "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."

Posted by dwhudson at October 4, 2007 9:48 AM