Closer Movie Review (2004)

I would have thought that a movie starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen would have been really interesting and engaging. Unfortunately, with Closer, I was wrong.

There are some films that seem promising, have a great cast, and an intriguing premise that just end up to be duds. This is a subjective position, of course, and many people love the movie that you find painful, so I can absolutely accept that. With this one, I never want to have to watch it again.

Closer is the story of four adults who ebb and flow in and out of each other’s intimate lives. Two of them have a meet-cute on the street, another becomes an object of desire during a paid photo shoot, and another enters the picture during an online tryst through a hook-up site. The entirety of this film centers around their different meetings at different stages of their relationships with each other and who is with who now.

I am not a fan of this movie. It’s shot well, the story is fine, the actors do their jobs, Natalie Portman looks great in a pink wig, blah blah blah. In the end, though, I found it overly pretentious and thoroughly annoying. I could not wait for it to be over.

These are four desperate and unhappy people who hate themselves and (pretty much) everyone else around them. They are trying to be high-brow as they are crawling through the figurative dirt, but they – and the whole film, since they are basically the whole film – just come off as irritating.

You do not like anyone because no one is likeable. In most movies, when that is the case, you’re able to find someone that you love to hate or love to be appalled by or love to be curious about, but there was none of that here for me. I did not like not liking them (which can be really fun), I was just ready to send them on their way to be frustrating together and away from me.

Conversations feel contrived, as most people don’t talk in these grande “cat and mouse” patterns over and over throughout time. It is all about control through sex and power dynamics – each of the four characters taking their own turn at the reins – which could be interesting, but it isn’t. I just found it trying.

The best part of the film happens in the very last two minutes, but for me, it was WAY too late. That said, the film structure is interesting, it is nice to look at, and some other technical things, so I can’t rate it lower than it deserves. But in the end – no thank you, next.

Runtime: 103 minutes

Motion Picture Rating: R

Languages Spoken In The Film: English

Should You Watch It? No

Did I Cry? No

My Rating: 1.5/5 Stars

Available: Free on Netflix, to rent on Prime Video, or may be available for free on other streaming platforms