this film is not as good as it's first impression's make it seem

Rating: 6/10 (12 January 2009)

I usually only review movies that just came out but I just saw this film last night and it struck me in an odd way so I decided to review it. One of my judges of a good movie that you find yourself thinking about the film several days after seeing it, I saw this film like 8 hours ago and I'm convinced I won't get it out of my head for the rest of the week. In fact this movie had such a weird profound effect on me I took a walk after seeing it just to get it clear in my head, and you know what consolation I came to while walking, this film is not as good as it's first impression's make it seem.
Oh don't get me wrong Eternal Sunrise is a good film, by many standards, but it pulls of the cleaver trick of being so weird that you automatically assume it's amazingly good. Vanilla Sky pulled the same trick, but I saw it for the piece of crap it was. This film is better than Vanilla Sky, but not better than say 12 Monkeys.
After my mind swam through the weirdness I came to some realizations about this film. One is that it is a Romance; I know Wikipedia says it's a Science Fiction Neo-Surrealist, but it's a Romance. And my main judge for a good romance is, do you fall in love with the girl as much as the main character does? And for this film the answer to this is a resounding no. I know all guys are into different "Types" of girls but there are some qualities in women that most men like and incorporating those into one "ultimate girl package" is in many ways the job of Romances (innless you're a girl reading this then it's the "ultimate guy package"). One of the reasons why I liked Yes Man so much was because Zooey Deschanel's character pulled this off so well, hell I still have a crush on her after seeing that movie. But you have to be delicate about this, if you try too hard to create "Mega Girlfriend" then the audience realizes what you're up to and the allusion is broken. This happened in There's Something About Mary, I really couldn't stand that film because Mary was so unrealistically appealing that I felt like meting Gandalf the Gray was more likely than meting her.
Anyway the Point I am getting at here is that Kate Winslet's character has the right idea, as far as being universally appealing, but takes it too far. Thought there are many different kinds of "Mega Girls" one of the most popular forms is the "Lively Spontaneous Girl" and this is clearly what the movie is shooting for with Kate Winslet. But instead of being lively and spontaneous in a cute fun way, she overdoes it and comes off more like one of those weird smelly girls who works at Spencer's Gifts. OK I'll admit maybe the guy writing this film was going for that, but I doubt it. In fact most of the characters in this film aren't very likable, and beyond that they're almost impossible to identify with. Jim Carey is supposed to be shy and aloof, but to me he comes off more as needy and cowardly. The only real character I liked was one of the films apparent Antagonists, who I would give more info about if it didn't mean risking spoilers.
But despite this flaw Eternal Sunrise is a movie worth seeing if only for the experience of it. Though the characters suck the actors playing them do a good job, unlike a lot of weird films it does a pretty good job of explaining itself to the audience, and if you can manage to understand the ending (which is hard) it's an extremely satisfying one. It's a good weird film just with some nasty looking smudges one it that I wanted to point out.