Martin Freeman plays Gary, a one hit wonder rock star who is now doing contract work for an ad agency. Gwyneth Paltrow is is somewhat shrewish girlfriend Dora who works in an art gallery. Penélope Cruz is radiant, as always, as Anna - the literal girl of Gary's dreams.
It is the search for the dreams that Anna is in that leads Gary to Mel (Danny DiVito) who leads a workshop on lucid dreaming, in the hour between the ballet and karate classes.
Gary does everything, including driving Dora away, in this film which is part straight narrative, part mockumentary.
Jake Paltrow (Gwyneth's brother) has made a funny, dreamy, generally unoffensive movie. I'm not being snide by saying unoffensive, I mean this is a nice movie you could take your parents to, or a teenage niece, and not be embarrassed to be enjoying it.
Argh, that still doesn't sound right. I like this movie, it's a great first writer/director effort by Paltrow and doesn't have many of those first film flaws that show up so often.
I do need to say that I like the role DiVito seems to be taking more often lately as the flawed wise man (I'm thinking this film and "The OH in Ohio" in particular). He's very good as the character who gives wise advice that he doesn't want to follow himself.
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