Despite good performances from Robin Williams and Toni Collette, this adaptation of the Armistead Maupin novel doesn't work as well as it might.
Williams plays Gabriel Noone, a gay storyteller on public radio who is distraught when his boyfriend, Jess (Bobby Cannavale), leaves him. He embarks on a telephone relationship with his biggest fan, a 14-year-old listener, Pete (Rory Culkin), who talks of a nightmare childhood.
Hearing the boy's troubles relieves his own emotional turmoil and he resolves to help him publish his memoirs. But when he goes to meet Pete's blind adoptive mother (Collette), he begins to doubt the whole story. Does the boy exist at all?
This is one of the few occasions when Williams underplays and, as usual, Collette contributes the kind of eye-catching performance for which she is noted. But the film drifts rather disconsolately past several of its more interesting themes of identity and illusion as though it were scared of imposing too much on its audience.
The gay element is the one most satisfactorily dealt with, possibly because it reflects Maupin's own break-up with writer Terry Anderson.
The Night Listener
Cert: 15
