The Closer You Get Movie Review

In Angela's Ashes, we got the impression that growing up a kid in Ireland really sucks. In The Closer You Get, we are made to believe that Irish adulthood doesn't get much better.

All right… so we don’t have to wait till the sequel to see Emily Watson be cremated and we don't have to sit through two hours and twenty minutes of a film that make a suicidal lemming seem like a happy chump, but The Closer You Get isn't exactly a movie that sketches the Irish as progressing far into their adulthood. In store for Irish men in adulthood is a simple life of multiple pints of flat Guinness combined with a sexual desperation so great that the Irish men take out a want ad in the Miami Herald.

Don't worry… The movie is about twenty times better than its plot.

Despite some initial mulling over the woman at the Post Office over whether or not to even send the advertisement, the ad does get sent through and does end up in the Miami Herald. In between then and the time when the American women are to arrive (an annual dance at the end of May), the Irish men predictably find exactly what they were looking for all along at home.

So how does this manage to take up 97 minutes? Well, it's love… Irish style. As in almost all Irish comedies, we see two very good traits coupled with one very bad one. The good traits are a predilection towards running jokes and a tendency towards a comedy of errors. The bad trait is the incredibly slow pace at which small town Celtic comedies proceed.

The Closer You Get is one of those movies that is funny as hell when it tries to make a joke, but it is also one of those movies that goes along at the speed of a Delaware driver in the Route one corridor of New Jersey. As a result, I found myself alternating between two states as I watched this movie… laughing very hard and damn near asleep.

There are a few scenes in which The Closer You Get really borders on a cure for insomnia. There are more scenes in which The Closer You Get is downright funny. And, after seeing it, you'll never think of window shopping the same way again. But overall, The Closer You Get gets by as mediocre.

Aka American Women. We're not sure why.



Gray skies are gonna clear up.