Confusion Reigns in This Goofy Flick

Rating: 1/10 (15 May 2005)

I have just dragged back from a friend's home after suffering thru this "Eternal Monsoon of the Addlepated Cerebellum." I feel goofy from watching it. You don't so much watch it as suffer through it. Perhaps this is the vogue nowadays to have jerky sequences signifying nothing much at all but a morass of frenetic activity pass as avant-garde film-making, but it's lost on me. I read a review by a famous Chicago reviewer who claims there's emotional involvement of the viewer with the main characters. Well, not with my friend and me. We were put off by these two sad cases - Jim Carrey a subdued and lonely, rather conservative man, and Kate Winslet as a hoyden given to obscuring her beauteous charms under flagrantly dyed hair ranging in shades of Day Glo orange to Mood Indigo Blue. What a waste of this fine actress. The only good thing I saw was the welcome tamping down of Carrey's normal ebullience to a rather more approachable and assimilable sort of male creature, albeit shot through with insecurities and given to impulses only made understandable by watching the flick through. But who wants or needs to see what happens to either of these (again let me use the adjective)GOOFY characters? Not we! I chose this film on the basis of the awards it has both been nominated for and has garnered, the crown jewel being Winslet's nomination for the Academy Award! Who nominated her for this schlock? I rather think she should put a bag over her head! Try to hide this one from her resume! What is to be happy about in a role so chaotic and obscure? I know nothing about this flighty, maddening woman, having watched this film! Who would want to hitch their wagon to Winslet in this movie? A lunatic! I would like Lacuna Corp. to erase the memory of having seen this film from my brain, even with the threat of the Lacuna employees bouncing on either side of me on my bed of tortured electrodes while they clean house and do a clean sweep of my cranium! These tormented employees seem to be full of frantic actions as well as the crazed "heroine." Kirsten Dunst proves she has not an ounce of fat as she hops about prior to copulation with wild-haired Mark Ruffalo and then, unsated, begins an immediate seduction of her boss, the grand suave Doctor of this mad Lacuna outfit. What a GOOFY group these people make and what a dingbat dunce-cap of a movie they inhabit! I am loony from watching it and I am going to bed now and try to sleep it off. I hope I don't have flashbacks! Oh, welcome Senility! I want no short-term memory of this wild, manic, episodic Endurance Contest to darken my dreams!