USA, 2004
Cast: Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen
Director: Mike Nichols
Columbia Pictures

As someone who has been dumped twice this year, I am pretty much a walking Cure song. Sadness and melancholia surround me and I listen to Disintegration like it’s the Gospel of St. Luke. So CLOSER is the last movie I should be seeing.

But in reality, CLOSER is the last movie anyone should see.

This is the most pro-suicide movie I have seen since YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. You’’ll walk out of the theater hating love, humanity and probably will never trust anyone again, ever. You’’ll sleep with one eye open and hire a private investigator to follow your significant other. In other words, this ain’’t a first date movie.
In his 857th movie this year, Jude Law is, in a character much like he was in the misbegotten ALFIE remake, a womanizing, arrogant, sniveling ***censored*** writer named Dan who meets Alice, a hot-pink haired Lilliputian/stripper played by a woefully miscast Natalie Portman. A car hits her and they fall in love in about 2.3 milliseconds.

Flash forward a few months later. Dan’s book is about to be published and his jacket-photo is being taken by Anna (the universally overrated Julia Roberts). Jude, with Alice waiting downstairs, seduces Anna just by saying, “Come here.”

That’s all. “Come here.”

Guys, try this technique with a woman you just met. Go to a Friday’s, order some Hot-rageous Buffalo Poppers from the pretty college-age waitress, flirt coyly, then, in an effete Brit accent, say, “Come here.”
You’ll not only embarrass yourself, but she’’ll laugh at you and probably spit in your Turbo Wackydillas.
As a prank, Dan goes to a sex chat room (pretending to be Anna) and in a tedious, meant-to-be-funny-but-just-***censored***-disturbing scene, engages in cyber-sex with dermatologist Larry, played with perverse glee by Clive Owen. Dan tells him to meet “Anna” at an aquarium where the real Anna just happens to be. Dan and Anna meet-cute and start a relationship.

Flash forward yet again, and both couples are pretending to be happy, but Jude and Anna are secretly cheating with each other. Another year goes by and they both let their mates know the truth about the affair, which destroys both Alice and Clive. But, even together, Dan and Anna are miserable. Every second they are on screen is like watching your parents twenty minutes before they decide to get a divorce.

Larry becomes quite insane (and a sexual predator) while Alice goes back to stripping at one of those high-class strip-clubs that exists only in the movies—the kind with subtle neon, mirrors, a very upper-class clientele and all the dancers have their clothes on and do interpretive ballet to Annie Lennox songs.
And the movie just keeps going on like this for what seems like eight hours. And, as if to spit in the ticket-buying public’s face, in the end nothing is resolved and you feel like reaching for the razors when you get home.

Director Mike Nichols, for years, has been held up as this great filmmaker, but honestly, the only good thing he has ever done has been THE GRADUATE. It’s time we out him as the past-his-prime hack that he is. Screenwriter Patrick Marber (who also wrote the play this was based on) makes Neil LaBute look like Neil Simon——and that’’s not a good thing. His writing is that pretentious, psuedo-intellectual NYC babble designed to make the art-house crowd nod silently and say things like “How true under their breath.

The cast is pretty much a hive of scum and villainy. Julia Roberts proves she should stick to falling on top of wedding cakes in romantic comedies, because she is way out of her realm here. Clive Owen (rumored to be next in line as James Bond) is the best of the lot, but all he has to do is act like a guy who’’ll rub up against you on a bus, which he does a great job of. Jude Law continues to be the worst actor ever, only popular because he’s British and women think he’s charming. C’’mon, —name one good thing he’’s done. GATTACA? AI? I [HEART] HUCKABEES? See? He’s five minutes away from attaining Affleck-status.

My greatest problem with this cast though is Natalie Portman. Can we get this girl a sandwich please? She’s supposed to be this alluring, sexy stripper, but all I see is a twelve-year-old boy. Every time she got naked, I was afraid Vice Cops were going to bust me for child pornography charges. I’’ll never understand Hollywood’s fascination with obviously starving, size zero stick figure Lolitas as objects of desire.

To sum it all up, if a lonely holiday season has you already feel like killing yourself but still need that little extra push, go see CLOSER. It’s a suicide note put to celluloid.

Review by Louis Fowler.