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60
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46
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78
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69
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58
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47
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67
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86
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30
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45
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96
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88
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71
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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89
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63
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73
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94
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29
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75
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83
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61
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42
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70
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66
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80
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83
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59
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67
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34
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62
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xx
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73
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xx
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54
Paper Heart
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44
Peter and Vandy
35
Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
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65
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76
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79
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40
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77
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xx
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89
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55
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61
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83
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66
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69
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64
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64
Where is Where?
xx
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74
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69
World's Greatest Dad
70
Yes Men Fix the World
69
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You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Universal acclaim
Based on 42 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 330 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama | Romance
Written by:
Charlie Kaufman (also story)
Michel Gondry (story)
Pierre Bismuth (story)
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 19, 2004
DVD: September 28, 2004
Running Time: 108 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for language, some drug and sexual content
Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, and David Cross
Joel (Carrey) is stunned to discover that his girlfriend Clementine (Winslet) has had her memories of their tumultuous relationship erased. Out of desperation, he contacts the inventor of the process, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Wilkinson), to have Clementine removed from his own memory. But as Joel's memories progressively disappear, he begins to rediscover his love for Clementine. (Focus Features)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Be Kind Rewind Dave Chappelle's Block Party Human Nature The Science of Sleep
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Lacuna Inc.
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Not only (Kaufman's) most accessible and romantic screenplay, it's his most complete. The third act works like a charm and pulls all his themes, characters and conflicts together beautifully.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
A wildly imaginative, hugely entertaining tour de force that asks big questions about life and love and fate while never ceasing to fully engage the viewer.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Watching Eternal Sunshine, you don't just watch a love story -- you fall in love with what love really is.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
A thoughtful, audacious meditation on love and relationships that finds a group of wildly disparate talents clicking together in perfect unison.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
It's a trippy but tender examination of human emotions, relationships, all-consuming love.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
A complicated story that demands your full attention; Mr. Gondry unfolds it at a mind-bending pace. This alone makes it a hugely refreshing respite from ordinary multiplex fare.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Feels like something entirely brand-new; such are the gifts of Kaufman and Gondry, inventors and magicians.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
A delightful little wormhole that takes us on a journey to another dimension of consciousness.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
This is the best movie I've seen in a decade. For once it's no hyperbole to say, "Unforgettable!"
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A masterpiece? Probably. Ingenious? Absolutely! Unforgettable? I'll see you at the 10th-year anniversary.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
One of those rare collaborations that artists dream of, and that film lovers crave.
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
A Chayefsky movie isn't hard to identify, but I think it's safe to say that these days a Charlie Kaufman movie is even more recognizable.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Chris Barsanti
How appropriate that one of the most daring films to hit screens in years is brought to a level of true mastery not by a great idea or nifty plot device, but by a simple love story.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Mariko McDonald
Fresh, heartfelt and ultimately heartbreaking in its honest portrayal of a modern relationship.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Gondry's virtuosity lifts the film far past science fiction into cinematic efflorescence. He shows us, more seductively than other directors have done, how freehand use of film can capture the flashes in our minds that slip between words.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Neither wholly cynical nor wholly romantic, Kaufman's story is a balance of smarts and sentiment. It's the most fully realized working out of his two favorite obsessions: the subjective nature of experience and the psychological mysteries of pair bonding.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
A memory play and a sleight of hand, Eternal Sunshine is more than anything else deeply sincere. Like Spike Jonze, who directed "Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich," Gondry succeeds principally by balancing Kaufman's churning skepticism with unflinching hope.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
A surprisingly bittersweet love story at heart, Eternal Sunshine values the sum of experience, which in this case means a thorns-and-all openness to romantic possibilities.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Kaufman may be counting on the audience's will, insistence and yearning to create a coherent love story from the shards and shrapnel he provides us.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
It's a baroque and intermittently brilliant brain twister so convoluted that it inevitably deposits the viewer in an alternate universe.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
If films about coping with memory loss and/or reverse-order storytelling now constitute a mini-genre, then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is arguably the best of the lot.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Chases so many ideas that it threatens to spin out of control. But with our multiplexes stuffed with toxic Hollywood formula, it's a gift to find a ballsy movie that thinks it can do anything, and damn near does.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, Eternal Sunshine has an emotional center, and that's what makes it work.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is unlike any other film I have seen... it's a great romance. It's willingness to flout conventions and eschew formulas is just one of many things to celebrate about this charmingly eccentric movie.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
It is by turns comic, dark and surprisingly tender. If one must reduce it to simple description, call it a love story with a twist. Or a twisted love story.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
For once, Carrey is more than merely tolerable. He's actually good, and the film that ebbs and flows around him is something you won't soon forget.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
There aren't many performers who can deliver the fullness of heart that such a plot demands, but Winslet is one of them. [22 March 2004, p. 102]
New York Magazine Peter Rainer
For most of Eternal Sunshine, I found myself fighting off Gondry's hyperactive intrusions in order to get at the melancholia at its core. Fortunately, the idea behind this movie is so richly suggestive that it carries you past Gondry's image clutter.
Read Full Review >Empire Colin Kennedy
Not particularly funny, or even very sunny, but it is Charlie Kaufmans first whole screenplay, and as wonderful as it is weird.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
This is the art-film Carrey: repressed, lovesick, unshaven. Essentially he's doing the same intellectual sad sack played by John Cusack in "Malkovich" and Nicolas Cage in "Adaptation"
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The thinking is shallow. The emotions are tepid. But the creativity is dazzling. If that sounds like a slam, consider that most Hollywood screenplays are predictable, rote and functional -- and those are the good ones, folks.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
While it's flawed and often tedious, Kaufman's script is, on the whole, boldly imaginative and enjoyably challenging.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
You'll be rewarded with a terrific finale. The twists here are the rare sort that seem both narratively surprising and emotionally engaging.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
Always engaging, never boring. You constantly appreciate Kaufman's intelligence and Gondry's lively filmmaking.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
For all the silliness, Kaufman is posing a serious question: Are we better off forgetting things that brought us pain, especially if we didn't change or grow as a result? You may not agree with his conclusion, but who else in Hollywood would pose this query at all, or explore it in such a daffy, gratifyingly inventive way?
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
This angular and intelligent romantic comedy isn't entirely consistent. Even as you laugh, it's a movie you admire more than love.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Represents a failure of nerve: As if Gondry and Kaufman weren't sure that the story of Joel and Clementine would hold us, the doomed couple's unfolding-in-reverse romance is intercut with a subplot filled with zany touches.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly John Powers
So daring, well-made and tirelessly inventive that I kept asking myself, Why isn't this even better? Why isn't it moving me? One huge problem is the hero... he's played by 42-year-old Jim Carrey, whose still-bottomless need to be loved invariably smacks of desperation and self-pity.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Wants to be a bittersweet comedy about erotic loss and memory loss. But it doesn't have the heart or brain.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 330 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Daniel L gave it a10:
People criticise it for being confusing, okay think you kind of missed the point, it does not make them think and they are not entertained... okay you can not help who you fall in love with and it is better to remember to have loved and lost than not at all. the film is entertaining and romantic and something different and beautiful. this film lies in my top ten of all films, Jim Carrey should have got an Oscar nomination. The film should have bagged director and technology nominations. the best of the past 10 years, difficult to say with some good ones but definately in the top 5. See it and enjoy and get taken to a side of cinema which we love and are surprised how vivid some directors and writers can be.
Exir K gave it a9:
There were times here and there where the story becomes a bit too disorienting, and I thought Gondry could've been slightly more subtle about the imagery. However, as a whole, the movie shines. I was crying by the end of it.
Jeremy E gave it a9:
Great plot, great acting, but disappointing ending
Anas R gave it a10:
In word of one syllable, it's incredible. How it implemented the idea of delete the things from patient's memories.
joby d gave it a10:
"Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders." "How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? "The world forgetting, by the world forgot. "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Each prayer accepted and each wish resigned. "
Troels J gave it a10:
This is the perfect love movie. In every way it is perfect and clever. And I generally hate love movies, but twisting the genre into this is just a majestetic achievement. It's crazy, sad, beautiful, funny and full of love; what every love movie wants to be, but only "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" is.
Linda N gave it a9:
Genius. I would give it a 9.5 if I had the option.
