Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Tonite I had to get the fruck out of my apartment so I headed down the street to see this here flick. I picked up two 16oz budweisers and some wasabis on the way. I also bought a medium popcorn and dumped the wasabis in with the popcorn and shook it up. Seriously try it next time. Tis so good. Then I cracked a beer with a cough right after I saw what could possibly be the worst preview ever. It was for Scooby Doo 2. If it comes on the screen avert your eyes. It's like a friggin pop cultural medusa. Horrible. Anyway, I put my feet up on the seat in front of me and scrunched down good for some heavy type smarty pants flicktorial and struggled to get past the offensively artsy title. What the hell is with that sucky sucky title anyway? They mentioned in the flick it's a quote from this dude Alexander Pope:
"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!/ The world forgetting, by the world forgot./ Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!/ Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd."
So... I don't really know what that's supposed to mean. I think sometimes movies that are supposed to make me think make me think about how sometimes I don't think so good -and I think I don't like that sometimes. Anyway, ESotSM. Charlie Kaufman wrote this screenplay. Charlie Kaufman annoys me because he forces me to like his movies. I resist all I can but somehow that wiener twerp makes me. And in the end it happened with this frickin flick too. Dagsnambit. It did win me over. He got the brain pazazz puhpow. Charlie frickin Kaufman! Arrgh! Ooh! Ain't you such a tricky writer! Mr. Fancy! You don't fool me! I know what you're up to! I see! I know! I see!
Anyway, this flick is a romantic puzzle movie with the whole Where are we? When are we? Who are we? What are we doing? And it stars Jim "The only Oscar I'm ever gonna get will be Cecil Demille's" Carrey and Kate "I showed my boobs in Titanic" Winslet. The story is they date and then they break up and they do this thing where they get the memory of the other person removed from their own memory. Wash the whole thing away. And then they whole thing plays out in this neatherworldplace. Past? Present? Fantasy? What? Sounds dopey I know and it is. But I like tricky crap like that. So for the first halfhour I tried to turn my brain on to follow everything. Like I was going to solve a mystery like Scooby. But eventually I realized that was a bad way to go about watching this. It just made me annoyed and bored. Once I stopped trying to figure it all out- it got better.
I liked alot of this movie but it took me too long to adjust to seeing Jim Carrey 'act'. I really like Jim Carrey alot. I just wish I could look at him and not be all like 'Look at Jim Carrey! Actor!' but somehow I hit a wall with him in 'serious' movies. I usually can get past it but it takes too long. And I get distracted by it. Maybe it's unfair but what's fair is fair and I'm fairly sure that's unfairly fair so there. I did like Kate Winslet. I can't think of one thing she's done Titanic. There's a few blurry previews that I remember washing by over the years. She was like running around in the dirt or something. But she's real good in this. She's a natural.
There was one decent sized problem for me and this flick. It had so much going for it but I simply wasn't drawn into it and trapped. I watched it as sort of an art project and appreciated everything it was doing. Parts were edited together so well that I actually laughed out loud. It unspooled nicely. The story holds. It had some funny and fun. I was able to dismiss some small issues with the logic involved and just went with it. But when push came to shove, this flick was so busy doing cartwheels for me that I never quite felt enough emotional pull from the characters. I was more emotionally affected by the structure of the film. And although I really did like this movie alot, I was far too aware of watching myself sitting there watching a movie- when all I wanted to do was forget me and the fact that I was watching one at all.
Three Good Things About This Movie
- It put the puzzle pieces things back together all nice nice and clean-
which was sort of a twist for a puzzle movie which sometimes rely on not having
to explain.
- Kate Winslet showed her knockers... oh wait. No she didn't. I'm thinking
about Titanic.
- Structurally I haven't been so impressed by a movie in a long time.
Three Bad Things About This Movie
- Sometimes it slows down or seems repetitive or something.
- I wanted to enjoy it more than I enjoyed watching it.
- Here and there it was too smart for it's own good.
All in all this a good rainy day romantic stoner movie. Might as well see something that's gonna give your brain a bit of a workout sometimes because if you don't it can get mushy or whatever. It's got the brain pazazz puhpow. It's hard not to like this flick just based on the fantastic scattershot smartness of it all and how good it all looked. It's worth seeing for sure. My one complaint is this jigsaw puzzle flick spent too much time focusing on all the pieces- without giving us a good enough look at the picture on the box.