Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Critic Reviews

A one gimmick affair that's periodically touching and clever but never the heartbreaking work of staggering genius its reviews would lead one to expect.

May be the first movie I've seen that bends your brain and breaks your heart at the same time.

Michel Gondry's angular and intelligent romantic comedy isn't entirely consistent. Even as you laugh, it's a movie you admire more than love.

A poignant story set in a clever plot amidst exceptional performances.

The perfect movie about love's inevitable imperfections.

Neither wholly cynical nor wholly romantic, Kaufman's story is a balance of smarts and sentiment.

Hectic, muffled, maddeningly near-brilliant.

Deft, witty, and vastly enjoyable.

A masterpiece? Probably. Ingenious? Absolutely! Unforgettable? I'll see you at the 10th-year anniversary.

This mind-bender is both funny and touchingly romantic.

It's giddy and groundbreaking, a feast for the head and the heart.

A loving, often rigorous look at love gone awry.

It's the kind of film that could mean more to people after they've left the theater and thought about it awhile.

Do you feel clever, punk? Well, do you? Because that's the only way to get your head around the latest Charlie Kaufman flick.

Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, Eternal Sunshine has an emotional center, and that's what makes it work.

You constantly appreciate Kaufman's intelligence and Gondry's lively filmmaking.

[Kaufman] clearly surpasses himself.

It's a trippy but tender examination of human emotions, relationships, all-consuming love.

One of the deepest, most moving dramas in years.

Dizzying, dazzling, smart and, most importantly, honestly struggling with the variables of love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a mesmerizing mind game that still manages to find perfect pitch while pulling heartstrings.

Although the characters are unremarkable, Kaufman and director Michel Gondry ... have some thought-provoking things to say about the nature of memory.

There is little charm in the coupling and almost no erotic intimacy, just a series of nerve-racking conversational collisions.

If films about coping with memory loss and/or reverse-order storytelling now constitute a mini-genre, then pic is arguably the best of the lot.

Audacious, thought-provoking and ruefully funny.

A happy collision of cutting-edge writer, stars up for a challenge and a director with a taste for the symbolic.