Choppy, jerking, head-spinning slop

Rating: 5/10 (9 September 2005)

I wish I could get both my time and my money back. Jim Carrey is charming and hard working in this, hard working because the script certainly doesn't help him - it is paper thin. Parts of it even sound improvised. I got a small taste of chemistry between the two principals who are broadly drawn, very little depth. The attraction of opposites is inferred though not enough. Kate Winslet is a fine actress but here she is woefully miscast as colourful Clementine, the wild child who works at Barnes and Noble in what looks suspiciously like her underwear. No one knows what Joel does for a living, it would have been interesting to find out, he is so tamped down. I rather liked the character of Mary, played by Kristen Dunst, and felt a story around her would have captured my interest more. I guess the point was that chemistry will triumph over and over again even if the memories are dumped. But do we want our memories, no matter how painful, deleted? For aren't our memories all we really have? To shape and strengthen and even change us for the better. What am I doing? Re-working the pitiful script? A good cast wasted. Leave these plot contrivances behind, Charlie Kaufman, and move on to something fresh and new. You're beginning to sound like Little Sir Echo. 5 out of 10.