One always expects or at least hopes for something spectacular from a movie that is introduced with the claim of being based on actual events. For we all know that life is most always stranger than fiction. But elements of an invented story sprinkled throughout would have been useful in The Night Listener, a vacuous film that initially offers promise, but quickly fades away to a monotonous pace and repeatedly disappointing, mundane scenes.

Gabriel Noone (Robin) is a writer/radio personality who gets pulled into a mysterious web by social worker Donna Logand (Toni) and her supposedly adopted son Pete (Rory). The latter, at the age of 14, has chronicled his childhood, which included being forced to participate in sexual acts at his parents’ little get-togethers and has left him infected with HIV. According to Donna, the dying Pete is a great fan of Gabriel’s and a telephone friendship is precipitated. Spiraling out of control from the break-up with his long-term boyfriend Jess (Bobby), Gabriel is quickly consumed with his new friends using Pete’s situation as a salve to soothe his own sad life. When Jess questions the validity of Donna and Pete’s claims, Gabriel goes to Wisconsin to assuage his fears that Jess could be on to something. Soon he meets Donna and realizes that perhaps Pete is fictitious and Donna just might be a little insane. That Pete might not exist is supposed to be a taunting juxtaposition to Gabriel’s own life, in which he has made his living from picking his relationships apart, in print and on-air, adding elaborate details to always make a better story. But, just like everything else in this film, this notion falls flat.

There are momentary signs of life from supporting actors Cannavale, Joe Morton, and Sandra Oh that are quickly muffled by Williams’ lethargy and the clumsy efforts of the usually wonderful Collette. There’s not much to say about the Culkin kid; his delivery was precise and smooth but uninspiring like most all Culkin performances. The Night Listener is not worth the admission price, not even worth the small popcorn expense. Of course, because the movie is so drab one does have time to think about the actual events and ponder why a 50+ year-old man would be encouraged to build such a friendship with a child in the first place.