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Michael Crichton's bestselling novel was both a high-tech thriller and source of controversy with its hot-button plot about a man's charge of sexual harassment against a female colleague and former lover. The movie, directed by Barry Levinson, turned these issues into a prurient thriller gussied up in glossy production values, virtual reality computer graphics, and steamy sex between Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Having cornered the market on roles for men whose brains are located south of their waistline, Douglas is well cast as the computer-industry guy who loses a plush promotion to the opportunistic Moore, and he's perfected the expression of paranoid panic. If you don't think about it too much, this is one of those films that can draw you into its manipulative web and really grab your attention.
Disclosure is more entertaining than thought provoking (because the filmmakers basically danced around the story's potential controversy), but there's enough star power and visual glitz to make this an enjoyable ride.
--Jeff Shannon
From The New Yorker
In Barry Levinson's movie version of the Michael Crichton best-seller, Michael Douglas plays an executive whose livelihood is threatened by his sexually predatory new boss (Demi Moore). The presence of Douglas, who has made a career of being pursued by beautiful, dangerous women, turns this sexual-harassment thriller into instant camp. Once again, he's the poster boy for men's fear of aggressive women-the Clarissa Harlowe of male-backlash cinema. In the picture's floridly silly centerpiece scene, Moore jumps his bones in her new office and he struggles manfully, showing us the hairy chest beneath the hero's ripped bodice. Once that hilarious encounter is over, the movie gets ordinary in a hurry; it's tasteful, bland, and only mildly entertaining. With Donald Sutherland, Caroline Goodall, Roma Maffia, and Dennis Miller. Screenplay by Paul Attanasio. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker