I'd prefer getting a root canal without novocain

Rating: 3/10 (26 March 2004)

This movie tells a simple story of a man discovering that even bad events are worth remembering and/or have some good memories worth remembering. In order to extend this simple concept to a feature length movie, the timeline and storytelling is broken up and mixed up to form a jigsaw in order to make it more difficult to piece together. The hopes is that when you finally get the whole story you'll be amazed and appreciate it more. Not a chance.
In Memento, the broken up story served a purpose and each scene added value making the style effective. In this movie, most of the scenes are boring, add little value and the crazy camera work and broken timeline distract from the story and the message. Jim Carey's performance was excellent and the viewer can quickly relate to and understand his character. Although normally this would be a benefit to a movie, here we are tortured into viewing his character's obvious self-discovery in a style that makes you nauseated and frustrated. I think most of Americans are so starved for non-hollywood type movies that they are unable to distinguish total useless crap from a true effective artistic story.
I can always make the wasted money up, but the time spent watching my clock and praying for a quick ending is lost forever.