"An Anonymous Content Production"? Not in this world.

Rating: Null/10 (8 May 2004)

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is one of those movies that signifies its strangeness by having the opening credits come quite a way into the movie (a la "Alias"). If nothing else, it lives up to the mindset it promises, although I have to admit I don't love this movie as much as others do; director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman have certainly delivered a clever and touching tale... but it's a bit too much of the former and a bit short on the latter.
The movie's biggest problem is that Jim Carrey (cast against type as an introverted nice guy) and Kate Winslet (as a woman who we know is a free spirit - though a troubled one - because she keeps changing her hair colour) don't really seem like they are or ever were a couple, even allowing for opposites attracting. This doesn't ruin the movie's effect, but it does make it seem a bit remote, especially as their relationship is seen almost entirely from his point of view. Remember, there are two sides to every story, and although we do eventually see her side of it, the real added dimension comes from Kirsten Dunst as the receptionist at the company that performs the mind-wiping that triggers the plot. She seems surplus to requirements at first, but it turns out that she's there to do more than dance on a bed in a T-shirt and panties.
This is one of the movie's main strengths (not Kirsten Dunst in a T-shirt and panties*); everything proves to have something else going on under the surface, including the structure of the movie itself. The constant unpredictability and the conviction of Carrey's performance as the man on an adventure inside his own mind makes it more than the exercise in cleverness for cleverness's sake that it could have been - the movie never forgets that it's a romance at heart. Jon Brion's wonderful score (which is almost another character in the movie) is another plus; so is Tom Wilkinson as the doctor in charge, and so are Dunst, Winslet, Mark Ruffalo and even Elijah Wood.
But though funny, ingenious and even a little touching, in the end "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is a feelgood movie for people who like to think they're too smart to be caught at feelgood movies; I like it, certainly, but I can't help wondering if this is one of those movies that viewers of a certain kind SAY you should love, rather than something you can take to your hearts of your own accord. Either way, it deserves a second viewing, and there aren't many Jim Carrey that even merit one.
*Which is not to say that's a bad thing, mind.