Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I'm not a fan of Jim Carrey, so I put off watching this for a long time in spite of good reviews. The premise is pretty good - the technology exists to wipe bad memories from your mind and so people have all memories of exes erased. While interesting, I still felt that it fell short in it's execution. The story telling is a little stylized - jumping around in time and not following a time line. In the years to come it will probably come across as dated but is in vogue now so don't wait too long to watch. Very early on, it becomes clear what direction the movie is headed, and from that point on I couldn't help feeling that it was taking too long getting there. I thought there was too much filler and it could easily have been trimmed by 25 - 30 minutes. The performances by most of the actors was very good though. I hate to admit it, but Jim Carrey can really pull off some quality dramatic performances. To me he is a lot like Robin Williams in that in comedies both come across as so desperate for approval that the performances are way over the top and more annoying than amusing but when they dial it back for dramas they can be quite compelling. Sadly, the same can't be said of Kirsten Dunst. I think her best performances were in Interview With The Vampire and Jumanji and her career has been in a steady decline since. But winding this up, I'll say that the Spotless Mind is a good solid middle of the road movie. Could have been better, but at the same time could have been worse.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

2 other films that I find similar to Eternal Sunshine are I Heart Huckabees, which is weirder (weirder than probably any movie I've ever seen, except maybe Naked Lunch) and Stranger than Fiction, which is less weird (and one of my faves). I don't know...for some reason these films all have the same vibe to me.