Cinema-therapy

Rating: 10/10 (4 April 2004)

You've heard it all already. Jim Carrey's best performance. Oscar-worthy performance by Kate Winslet. Brilliant Love story, blah, blah, blah. It's all true.
Director Gondry uses his music video influences in this movie, but not as much as I had expected. The real star here is Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter. He has crafted a beautiful, flawed, and quirky story full of interesting characters and ideas. Jim Carrey took a huge pay cut just to be in the guy's movie. Carrey got the script, saw that it was a Kaufman script, and accepted immediately. Kaufman is the new Hitchcock in that respect. People don't care what it is or how much they'll get, they just want to be a part of something real. Something different.
And, if anything, different is exactly what Charlie Kaufman is. His previous original screenplays, Human Nature with Gondry, Adaptation and Being John Malkovitch with Spike Jonze, are widely recognized as three of the most original stories produced in Hollywood in the past 10 years at least. This movie successfully merges the wonderful weirdness of those three, and incorporates a timeless love story that is as wonderful as it is unconventional.
The only thing that I didn't like about this movie was the fact that I came out of the theater aching for love. I'm not the sort of person who shows their feelings on the outside too often, but this one made me smile at everyone I made eye contact with on the long walk back to my place.
To me, this movie was the perfect love story, and if you haven't seen it, I suggest you go and judge for yourself.