Pseudo-intellectual claptrap of the Charlie Kaufman Kind

Rating: 1/10 (21 November 2004)

(Spoiled...) Like the rest of Kaufman's self-absorbed hallucinations, Eternal Sunshine fails to jump the "who cares" hurdle. What an overwrought mess of a movie. As far as that mind-surgery-memory-deleting helmet goes, why in tarnation was Jim Carrey's character--a self-described uninteresting bore--so very talented at resisting the program? No mental giant, he would have succumbed immediately. End of movie. But no! We replay this deja vu game of meeting forgotten lovers into infinity, while every character gets thrown into stylistic outer space: Comedy for some, tragedy for others, sex farce when Mr. Kaufman runs out of ideas. Actually, apart from Sunshine's tangled structure, there are no ideas. Not once are we given useful, relevant information about anyone who inhabits the film. Carrey and Winslet's megawatt dual-presence is wasted inside of a situation that resembles a hamster cage, not a story. Only Tom Wilkinson, as the memory-deleting helmet inventor, seems to grasp the danger of what's happening. Kaufman, however, surrounds him with a gang of assistants who are giggling morons. What a sad, confused, irrelevant film. I was reminded more than once of the forgotten French mind-game films of the sixties. Marienbad, anyone?