Slow starting like all Kaufman's scripts

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 2004)

I love this film. It does things for me that few others do. You have your strong heroine, Kate Winslet, and a chopped up time sequence that makes the first 20 minutes very long on viewer patience. (why do producers insist on stopping everything to explain stuff that isn't even technically probable. Think of Star Trek's or any SCI-FI genre's techno-babble. The Greeks had it first--it's IMPROBABLE, okay? That's where the concept of "entertainment" begins. More explanation doesn't help.)
Kaufman is a genius writer. I checked the time at 1 hour 22 minutes and still the film was teasing and pleasing. You can't tell me this is formulaic at all. Maybe he's incapable of delivering a formulaic film, huh?
However, the previous comments about emotional distance in the film is worth mentioning. Though Carrey has learned much about acting, he's not up to the challenge here. Rob Lowe in "About Last Night" displayed megawattage more relationship pain than Carrey's character. The viewer can't see a depiction of emo pain here other than Joel Barish moping around and complaining to others. Maybe the producers just "didn't want to go there" but I paid for this, and I WANT TO SEE SOMETHING!
Winslet's "Clem" is among a handful of fully realized female characters in all of commercial film. It should be a bench mark for those caring about this for years to come.