Am I missing something?

Rating: 2/10 (24 December 2004)

Yuck. So many people have suggested that I'm unsophisticated for detesting this movie, suggesting that I can't appreciate "an adult movie for adults that uses intelligent dialogue and tries to delve into the nature of sex and love" (and one that also may be "brutal"). But I think Neil LaBute's stuff like "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors" -- which certainly fits all those descriptions -- is tremendous (and which I've seen "Closer" most frequently compared with). When I saw "Company," I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Its characters and settings were so brutally real that you desperately wanted to look away, but so compelling that it would have been impossible.
On the other hand, I thought the dialogue in "Closer" was not particularly intelligent -- it was more pretentious than anything else. It may have ATTEMPTED to delve into sex, but I've honestly seen that done with more wit in gross-out flicks like your average Farrelly Bros opus or "American Pie." And unlike LaBute's films, there was certainly no believable depiction of love -- a lot of talk about different characters "loving" each other but no development that actually demonstrated it. Brutal? It strived to be, but the attempts left me howling. Compelling? No way.
I will say that Clive Owen and Natalie Portman gave tremendous performances with what they had to work with (unfortunately Portman's character was very grating. Not her fault -- it was written that way). For that matter, each character was a caricature, and each attempt to make any of them seem human or real was totally unconvincing). Jude Law played himself. Julia Roberts gave a lot of pensive, sidelong stares.
I'm rarely this compelled to slam a movie. But I honestly wanted my money back, and after reading all the external reviews, I'm just baffled.