Should be nominated for a Daytime Emmy (spoilers big time)

Rating: 3/10 (6 October 2004)

First off, the consensus that this movie is unique is bogus. Anyone thinking that need look no farther than Total Recall. Memory manipulation is well-traveled territory in sci-fi and simply removing the action does not a unique movie make. Not to say a fresh take on the potentials of the technology is impossible, but this movie fails to do so. Here memory removal plays a very small role that does no more than exaggerate the classic "I'm throwing out your stuff and moving on" routine, an event so thin it can barely maintain a jeans commercial much less a motion picture.
The core failure of this picture is that it tries to force together two people who obviously should not be. She's a flaky hipster prone to severe mood swings and he's an introverted nebbish with zero social skills. At these two extreme ends of the spectrum there's no chance of working it out by meeting in the middle. All they have in common is personality disorders and that's a poor basis for a relationship. Spiderman 2 has a similar failing.
Speaking of Spiderman 2, we are once again subjected to the screen presence of Kirsten Dunst. This time she's the center of a B-plot (straight out of soap opera textbooks) that hijacks the third act. Girl has affair with married man, gets "amnesia" and forgets affair, has affair reintroduced to her memory and - oh-so-conveniently - confronts married man in front of a well-lit window facing the street where his wife has just pulled up in her car. The wife, as has been played out thousands of times, misinterprets this as infidelity and screeches away with the exasperated husband chasing the car.
(Side note: Considering that disposing of all reminders of the removee is required for the memory wipe to succeed, how does Kirsten's character manage to work daily in the same office as her removee with no recall whatsoever?)
Tacking on this subplot was unnecessary, but it serves as a welcome break from the excruciatingly slow flashbacks that comprise the bulk of the film. Carrey and Winslet's scenes are well acted and scripted but amount to nothing more than lengthy snippets of a mostly bad romance. More negative drama that only a soaps fan could enjoy. As for reuniting them at the end...
There are two lessons to this movie. One is removing your memory (or simply forgetting the past) is a bad idea - a point made several different ways with no subtlety. Two is don't ever give your panties to a guy who works at a fly-by-night brain wiping operation. Let's focus on lesson one. Kirsten and the doctor both learn it the hard way. Carrey and Winslet don't learn it at all; although at their expense the audience does. By getting them back together with no memory of each other the audience knows they are doomed to repeat history. In conveying that point the movie succeeds. Unfortunately there is a long, boring, clichéd, needlessly convoluted road to travel to get there.
3/10