By Dennis D. McDonald

Many years ago I remember thinking,  while reading Philip K. Dick's quirky novel UBIK, "No one will ever be able to film a movie like this." I think I just saw one -- ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, and it makes perfect sense in a lopsided way.

Jim Carrey (Bruce Almighty) and Kate Winslet (Enigma, Heavenly Creatures, Quills), play characters who meet after having fallen in and out of love. They fall so out of love that each employs a medical procedure to erase their memories of each other. But they meet again and fall in love.

Problem is, the medical procedure is implemented quite sloppily on Jim Carrey's character. We spend much of the movie experiencing a series of off-center situations where Jim Carrey' sad-sack Joel is thrown around inside memory fragments, scenes from childhood, and recent flash-back experiences with Kate Winslet's character.

In general I enjoy time travel and time shifting plots, especially when they are done well. This one, with a creenplay by Charlie Kauffman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), is superbly crafted, acted, and edited. Kate Winslet especially shines as Clementine.  Problem is, none of the characters is especially lovable and I ended up, at least, admiring more the craft and technique of this film than the actual people-story it was telling.