I want my 90 minutes back

Rating: 2/10 (18 January 2005)

I have to admit up front that I saw this film ONLY because of the recent awards. I read some reviews first, and knew a little of what the story would include. But halfway through the movie I found myself looking at my watch wondering when the story will actually begin. Everything was prelude, and pretty boring prelude at that.
While some reviewers seem to find the dialog distracting, I did not. Nor did I find the story, as a whole, unreasonable for a movie; the story was told in a "thinking man's" format. Time moves forward, sometimes by months or years, simply because of a fade. The actors did a great job, as did the director. The problem is, this is simply a boring story about boring characters.
I will not dispute that each of the actors provides outstanding performances. Julia Roberts is cast against type, and this is one of the few movies I actually thought she acted. Natalie Portman has grown up from Mars Attacks and Star Wars, but is still cast as a one-dimensional "girl" taking the path of least resistance through life. This is clearly a character-driven movie, but none of the characters grows/changes/learns from their sometimes monumental mistakes. If one definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time, then these people are all crazy.
What could have been a great discourse on love versus sex is, instead, a lost opportunity. These characters have no sense of morality (or ethics, depending on how you define terms) as they live their lives with one partner, while sleeping with another from time to time, and never emotionally open up to anyone. Their arguments are all witty comebacks, with little true emotion. Portman cries, and Owen erupts, but the circumstances simply don't give them credibility. What happens when the smartest people in the world have to show us their emotion? They use fast, sharp dialog.
The most repeated adjective in all the favorable reviews I read was "honest," as in "this film is an honest portrayal of modern relationships." Only if the rest of the world is totally dysfunctional and amoral. Having been through "my share" of relationships, some of which ended badly and others simply ending, and being married (my first and only) for many years now, and also having been employed in a field where others' relationships are opened up to me regularly, I found nothing "honest," or "true to life," or even "remotely reasonable" about the characters in this movie. While they bemoan the lack of love in their lives, they do nothing to look for it, or even to earn it.
These characters are all "honest," in the sense that they don't actually lie when confronted with their "dishonest" conduct, but they are also all dishonest with themselves, in that they are all seeking sex while believing they are getting love. These are spoiled children, with enough education to engage in the sharp argument, but no wisdom to learn from their mistakes.
Mike Nichols, again, pulls a rabbit out of his hat. A truly talented director with a gift for seeing what is going to be on the screen, he and Roberts are the only shining stars of this movie. The rest is raw and, when all is said and done, a waste of time. (It's not that I mind raw, or even gratuitously raw. A character-driven movie should, at least, have interesting characters.) I can't say that I didn't like the movie -- I'm sure I wasn't supposed to "like" it -- it's that the story and characters were just plain boring.