Despite an intriguing premise The Night Listener is the opposite of what a thriller should be, feeling "mundane and inconsequential". That's despite Armistead Maupin stepping in to adapt his own novella about a radio talkshow host who gets embroiled in a mysterious long-distance relationship. In the end, even the star power of Robin Williams and Toni Collette wasn't enough to get moviegoers' attention.

Sound Bites

Snippets from the original press junket are all that accompanies the film on DVD. Williams is first up to talk about those aspects of the project which most intrigued him (although he adds that his 30 year friendship with Maupin also had a lot to do with his involvement). "It bookends One Hour Photo," he says, "in terms of being on the receiving end of that type of disturbed personality." For most of this six minute interview, Williams adopts the same monotone drone that nearly put us asleep during the film. It's only when asked about Collette that he springs to life, doing an OTT impersonation of her (something akin to those Sheila's Wheel's ads) before bizarrely seguing into a Robert De Niro impersonation.

Unfortunately director Patrick Stettner can't do any impressions, so he only gets three minutes to pique our interest. That's just enough time to mention that a) 'storytelling' is a key theme in the film b) it was a bit tricky reconciling real-life with the needs of fiction, and c) how great Williams and Collette are.

Shedding Light On The Night

Maupin expands on the real-life roots of the story in his interview. He reveals that he was inspired to write the novella after striking up a phone-friendship with a young AIDs victim - or at least that's what the kid told him… In terms of adapting the novella for the big screen he says that the biggest challenge was trying to visualise the phone conversations without giving too much away about the characters. Not surprisingly he doesn't address the problem of trying to flesh out a story that was quite insubstantial to begin with.

To put it frankly, The Night Listener will have you tuning out and switching off quicker than a self-absorbed breakfast radio DJ.

EXTRA FEATURES

The Night Listener DVD is released on Monday 16th April 2007.