Boring, nonsensical, but inventive. (Spoilers there be).

Rating: Null/10 (9 May 2004)

Was this film really worth watching? I thought I would give it a chance as a) Jim Carrey was in it, but more importantly b) Charlie Kaufman wrote it, whom after Adaption really set my hopes up high. The film definitely starts on a high note, the mundanity of Joel's life is shown to us in full and there is some a really interesting exchange on a train between Joel and Clementine. Then after 20 minutes, you realise there has been no opening credits and thus we are thrown into the story, with Joel sobbing his heart out over Clementine's infidelity. Then comes the boring part. We realise that she has had something to do with removing the memories of poor Joel from her mind. But Kaufman forgot one thing, and that was to tell us HOW LONG they had actually been together. Then for some reason Joel gets the memory erasing thingymajig treatment, cue HUGELY overlong scenes of Joel and Clementine talking inside Joel's mind in different scenario's where the weird and wonderful (sometimes) happen. I thought these would last only 10 minutes, but they actually take up the majority of the film. My main problem was that nothing made sense, but after seeing many many films I decided that the convention of cinema dictates that when you're watching a film where crazy things are happening they are always tied up in a neat fashion at the end which makes you think "...oh yeah!". However, Eternal Sunshine's ending tried to do this but as all of these things were happening, I got completely lost and I was paying very close attention. The end of the film just made me think "what the hell?" and will require another couple of viewings to get my head around completely. Also, Mr Carrey isn't given the chance to flex his facial muscles as much as before. I thought he had gone serious when I saw Trueman Show, and The Majestic confirmed it but last year's insanely enjoyable Bruce Almighty made me think he could do both. I was disappointed that the comedy was removed from his role and the funniest thing in the film was Clementine's worrying habit of dressing up potatoes (you will see for yourself). Overall, Charlie Kaufman has given us an intriguing story and the suggestion that we should just keep bad memories inside us as it builds character and lets us remember for future purposes. Unfortunately it isn't really applied to this film, and definitely left me feeling very cold and unfulfilled.
Get it on video so you can rewind and see it again to understand it, but it's not worth going to the cinema because you can't ask the projectionist to show you it again to understand what happened.
2 out of 5 Hattori Hanzo blades.