ihavebeenfloated

Just finished watching The Night Listener staring Robin Williams and Toni Collette, two actors I like a lot. This will just be a little brief review because I am just a little too disturbed to write too much about it.

Robin Williams is Gabriel Noone, a late night radio host who shares stories based off of his life. He’s given a novel written by a young boy about his original family who repeatedly raped him and video taped it with friends, and starts up phone conversations with the boy and his adoptive mother (Toni Collette). Doubt is sewn into him by his ex-boyfriend and friends as to whether or not the boy is actually a real person or not. The exact opposite of hilarity ensues as Gabriel tries to unravel this potential mystery.

The film is prefaced with the fact that this is based on true events, and it doesn’t really surprise me. Being one who grew up on the internet, I find it relatively surprising to say that I believe I only ever encountered one person who wasn’t who they said they were. This was a sixteen year old boy named Sam, who had leukemia. He was an online friend of mine for at least two years, and he even had an online girlfriend who was sixteen who I talked to often as well. I always had a funny feeling that Sam wasn’t who he said he was, and whether this was a genuine feeling or just jealousy from wanting to steal his online girlfriend, I don’t really know, but I always knew somewhere. It was only two years later that I actually found out that he was a forty year old man, grossly overweight, and devoid of any sort of social life at all.

So, you could say I have some minor first hand experience with people not being who they said they are. This movie deals with a different form of it, and it deals with it very well. There are some genuinely creepy moments, especially one near the very end where my stomach knotted up so tight I thought I was going to be sick, all thanks to Toni Collette, a pair of sunglasses, and one hell of a musical cue.

The only down side to the film is that it’s a little slow to start, which is surprising since it is only an hour and twenty minutes long, but once it gets the ball rolling you’re fairly well fixated. I recommend it, especially for Toni Collette’s performance.