Review: The Closer You Get, the Sicker You Feel
Dateline: 4/15/00
Once
again, Fox Searchlight delivers a disappointing portrayal of life in a small
Irish town. This time, instead of fighting over a dead man's sweepstakes ticket
like in last year's Waking Ned Devine, the villagers in The Closer
You Get are competing for the attentions of mythical American women.
Fox Searchlight would like us to believe that the residents of rural villages on the Donegal coast are simpletons with tendencies toward eccentric and petty behavior. In this movie, they want us to think that inspired by a mistaken showing of Ten, a group of desperate Irish men would place a classified ad in a Miami newspaper to entice American women to fly to Ireland with matrimony in mind. Havoc and hurt feelings ensue. Does this plot sound thin? Well, it is.
The banality of this movie can't be blamed on a lack of veteran talent: it is produced by Uberto Pasolini (The Full Monty), written by British playwright William Ivory, and starring Ian Hart (Back Beat, The End of the Affair, B. Monkey), Ruth McCabe (The Snapper, My Left Foot), Sean McGinley (The General). However, the movie marks the feature debut of Aileen Ritchie. Not to say that it's Ms. Ritchie's fault that the film is nothing but a series of contrived scenes. And that's not even the worst of it. It's annoying that the narrator is only a major character in the first and last scenes, but it's downright ludicrous that the main character spends all of his time messing about with his own bullocks.
The lesson of The Closer You Get is that true love is most often found right where you live. If that's the case, then I think I'd choose the Spanish sailors over those unchanging Irish louts any day. So it comes as a weak surprise at the end when the actual American girls disembark from the bus because by that time, the audience is with the narrator: they just want to leave.
Directed by Aileen Ritchie,
Starring: Niamh Cusack, Kate Sean McGinley, Ian Hart, Ewan Stewart, Ruth McCabe
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for brief language and some sexual material. Runtime: USA:90; Country: Ireland; Language: English
Beck Finley is a freelance writer and critic. She lives on the Missouri side of Kansas City with her husband, Ryan Kegley, and dog, Tummy.
