Extremely well done

Rating: 9/10 (17 October 2004)

There is not much to criticize on this movie (I rated it 9/10), so here are my two cents:
a) A+ story from the man who wrote "Being John Malkovich". The story is not "easy" ("like poor underdog gets great girl in the end and they live happily thereafter"), but if you keep up and follow the story, its great. Its realistic, its fun, its never too technical (the movie actually is about brain surgery here!) ... good mixture of everything!
b) The cast ... if you wanna see a great main actor couple, go watch this one, Carrey and Winslet are amazing. They are on a completely different level than Elijah Wood and Kirsten Dunst, its hard to believe that this is Mr Ace Ventura and Cable Guy together with Titanic woman (I know, both did great movies since then, I'm just pointing out their origins). Carrey will never lose his little craziness, but as this movie showed, he is capable of much much more. When you see him together with Kate Winslet as "the couple", you doubt nothing they do or say: They ARE Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski! Affleck, watch this and see how its done!!
c) Visual Effects: As this is a more serious (but still funny!) movie, there is no place for alien blasters, explosions or space ships ... but that doesn't mean that producers do not try to fit in as much FX as possible (I'm not judging, I LOVE Michael Bay's Bad Boys :-)) But not in this movie, the crew showed great respect to the storyline but managed to fit in little gimmicks that help the viewer develop its view on the characters. At no time of the movie you get the feeling like "ahhh thats sooooo unrealistic" or "nahhh take it away that doesn't fit!) ... from minute 1 you are more like "hmmm, actually this could happen in the apartment above me!" and "great idea, that a FX that adds an unforeseeable fun element". The changes of point of view (inside Carrey real, inside Carrey dream, out of Carrey) lets the viewer explore the characters and their surroundings without things getting overwhelming (side story lines ...).