From Murph:

When I left the theater after seeing Closer, I thought, “Boy, you wouldn’t want to invite any of these people to a fun party!” After about a half an hour, I really didn’t want to spend any more time with the empty, whiny bunch.

Clive’s role, the shark among the poor fish, was the best of the four, and he played it to perfection. He, this handsome man, somehow managed to look sleazy. There was a certain oily kind of sheen to his face, and his sneer was something to behold. He had three really good scenes – making his wife Anna tell him all about having sex with Dan, in the strip club room with Alice, and his destroying of Dan in his office. As the major critics have said, he did dominate the film – a lot of it was his talent, but some was thanks to getting the best part in the movie.

I found Closer hard to enjoy because its characters made it difficult to feel anything for them. I like to have some kind of an emotional attachment to a film, even if it is to hate a character; but here, I couldn’t work up any connection. By the end, I could care less who got who, or who didn’t.

The dialogue was clever (but not funny, except for the cyber-sex scene), Nichols did wonders with filming a static play, the actors all were outstanding, but the characters they played? Forgeddaboudit!