Nitehork's Thoughts and Rubbish

I saw Closer last week. Natalie Portman, Jude Law (liked him ever since he stole Gattaca from Ethan Hawke), Julia Roberts and Clive Owen all did a great job in the acting department, can't fault that. My problem lies in the actual timeline and how it was passed onto the viewing audience that time had, in fact, passed. Jude law's character had just met Natalie's character, he had made mention of a g/f (whose name I can't remember at this point in time), then the next scene we see Julia Roberts taking his picture for a book that is about to be published. We find out that, at this juncture in time, he has been with Natalie's character few a few months.
This happens a few times, the viewer being slightly confused (or at least Nat my g/f, and I, were in any case) as to what the hell is going on.
I just read a review of this movie on www.critics.com "Makes no attempt to hide its unlikely plot and wholesale absurdity. Characters behave completely irrationally, uttering the worst dialogue imaginable" - but I feel I have to quibble with the author of this critique, Christopher Null. That is what real life people do isn't it? Act irrationally and absurdly. Life is made up of horrible and damaging dialogue, isn't it?
No, the only real annoying thing I found with this movie was the fact that something more than five years had passed in the space of the movie and none of the characters looked any different or aged at all. Huh? I know that five years isn't exactly a huge amount of time to have passed, but people do change over even that length of passed time.
Hmm I guess, if pressed I would say that I liked Closer, but I didn't think it as good as the rave reviews had made it out to be.