"The Good Night" **1/2 (out of four): Promising debut from writer-director Jake Paltrow about a sleep-obsessed man who meets the literal girl-of-his-dreams has some perceptive moments amid a lot of tossing and turning.

Dreams depicted on film are always a tricky business. By definition, dreams have an ineffable quality that can't be captured. The more you define them, the less they seem to be dreams. "The Good Night" - an ambitious writing and directing debut by Jake Paltrow (brother of Gwyneth) - tells the story of Gary (Martin Freeman from BBC’s “The Office”), a struggling songwriter who becomes obsessed with sleep after meeting the girls of his dreams...in his dreams. Dreams have played pivotal roles in films like 1998’s treacly Robin Williams dud “What Dreams May Come” or 2000’s J. Lo design-a-thon “The Cell”, as well as my personal favorite, 1984’s Dennis Quaid-Kate Capshaw camp-fest, “Dreamscape”. “The Good Night” has more in common with Michel Gondry’s disappointingly precious “The Science of Sleep”. Both films feature men divorced from reality to an almost psychotic degree. And both ask us, unsuccessfully, to feel for them.

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