But now I really do have spots in my mind

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2006)

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
I'm sure watching this a few times will have the effect of erasing any confusion you might have. I am sure. But...well, I can't recall if I ever saw this film. Yet, yet... There's Jim Carrey in my mind playing a straight role. Sorta straight. Actually Kate Winslet has most of the good comedic lines. I can't tell whether she was once a girl friend of mine or if I watched her in a movie. She says she's high maintenance and she has to have a different color for her hair every week. Yeah, I remember her. My god she was nice. Quirky, but nice.
And then she erased all memory of me. I saw her in this book store and she pretended she didn't know me. Didn't know me! Wow, after all we had been through. I mean she's an emotional roller coaster. And that really dissed me off so I had my memory of her erased. And then we began to see each other in strange places, on the beach--but that was right. I met her on the beach. But then I was a child and she was there under the kitchen table, and my mom washed me in the sink and I felt so secure and Clementine oh my darling you are lost and gone forward, dreadful sorry Clementine was so, so sweet and so so pretty and just a nut case.
And then there's Kirsten Dunst, she of the incredibly agreeable figure, dancing over my body as I lay electronically stoned. Mary, her name is. She and the doc had this fling. He would get her to somehow seduce him and then erase the memory and then get her to do it again. Really bummed his wife out.
Oh, but Clem and I are here as on a darkling plain where ignorant armies clash by night and I think something's missing, the ground or the sky or some wall or maybe something is fused together that shouldn't be fused together, like this old house on the beach that Clem broke into, I mean she has balls, and I was just a fraidy cat, and wait, wait, I am gaining control. She and I together are chasing down the missing parts of our memories erased by the evil Lacuna Inc. people. All these memory movies going through my head--Memento (2000) especially, by Christopher Nolan. There's something going on here with these memory movies. I think Oliver Sacks has something to do with it. Are we just our memories, and who would we be without our memories? Would life be worth living? If we just lived in the here and the now would we be animals? Anyway, this is a love story, the love story of my life. But is it possible to selectively erase memories? I mean creating lacunar infarcts on purpose? Is that legal? It is safe? Lacunar infarcts come from strokes that leave little blank spaces in your brain so that you're missing something like the memory of your first kiss or the time you saw Wayne's World..
Okay, this is science fiction like Vanilla Sky (2001) with Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. The dialogue is really sharp with all sorts of witticism written mostly by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman who also wrote the script for Being John Malkovich (1999). Need I say more? I mean clever with a capital K. By the way, idle thought: Clementine's last name is Kruczynski. Isn't that the Unibomber's last name, good old Ted? No, that was Kaczynski. Okay, never mind. Anyway, here's a clever line: "Are we like couples you see in restaurants? Are we the dining dead?" I think I said that, or wish I had. Or, "Drink up young man. It'll make the whole seduction part less repugnant." She said that, and I guess she oughta know, heaven help us, from first hand experience.
Look, if I ever, but ever, get a chance to fall in love with Kate Winslet, please, please, do NOT erase the memory. Thank you.
Bottom line: bizarro and entertaining, witty and cute, with a nice cast. And Jim Carrey as a straight up kinda guy is a terrific actor, and Kate, well I'll tell you a secret, gentlemen. You can see a full frontal sans clothes shot of her in the movie Jude (1996). Yes. Also worth watching is her debut film Heavenly Creatures (1994) shot when she was 18.
One last line, as Joel says, "Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating."