Excellent, though neither Kaufman's nor Carrey's best

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2004)

I've been a Kaufman fan since he was writing for television, and was blown away by Malkovich, like most everyone was.
It's truly shocking this movie is 200 places higher rated than either Malkovich or Adaptation among IMDb users (#35 on the top 250, compared to #208 and #235 respectively). I thought this movie was great, though not as inventive as his prior work. Actually, this movie is probably the most conventional movie Kaufman's written besides "Confessions".
Also, a shout out to those who think Spike Jones directed this, actually Michel Gondry did. Gondry has given us better crafted movie than Spike Jones has with Kaufman's scripts. This movie's full of fun visual gags. Still, I'd love to see what how Kaufman's scripts panned out if he ever paired up with a director that didn't come from the music video generation.
As far as performances go, the best aspect of this movie is Kate Winslet. The character that Kaufman gave her is spectacular, and she is awesome as usual. Carrey's character just mopes a lot. In the end, Carrey's performance in this movie is nowhere near his performance in.... ta-da... Cable Guy. Cable Guy is his best and most underrated work. Carrey was born to do goofy faces and over the top characters, why not appreciate the movies where he's at the top of his game? It's not exactly a subtle performance, but since when is subtle always better? Would we ask the Three Stooges to do Hamlet?