I finally watched The Closer for the first time (the movie, not the TV series).
None of the main characters were human. I almost turned the TV off about ten different times (mostly in the first 45 minutes), but the production quality and the atmosphere was good enough that I kept watching in spite of my better judgment.
Natalie Portman stole the show. She is the only reason I kept watching. Yes, she's beautiful, but that isn't why she caused me to keep watching. In fact, I saw her earlier today in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and she didn't hold my attention at all. In The Closer, she just did a great job of making her character into a real human being. Her lightening-quick "falling out of love" at the end -- to the point of feeling absolutely nothing -- is a bit unrealistic, but that's the fault of the writer, not of Portman.
To repeat, those characters are not real. Or rather, if they are real, then they don't represent the vast majority of humanity. They are disturbed people, with Portman's character being the closest to normal. No normal person falls head-over-heels in love that quickly at the start of a casual affair with a complete stranger, especially if that person has an amazing lover already. In a real affair, with real people, yes, it is possible to fall in love on the spot; in a casual affair, with two-dimensional caricatures, no. If the director and producer hadn't done such a good job with the atmosphere and the dialogue (as unrealistic as the characters' conversations, behavior and interactions were -- not counting those of Portman), I suspect the movie would have been a totally obnoxious turn-off for most viewers.
Such exaggerated depictions of the shallowness of humanity annoy me to no end.
Whether I know what I'm talking about or not, I just had to get that out of my system.
