So, as I mentioned on the "film school" thread, I just got back from a preview of this in SF.
Verdict is: everyone will be saying that this is darker and yet also more humanistic than anything else Charlie Kaufman has been involved with. They would probably be right. There is some awful comic mugging from Kirsten Dunst and Mark Ruffalo, but on the plus side, very little from Jim Carrey, and if everyone could please stop being surprised that Carrey can actually do "introspective" and admit what we all know - that he is a brilliant and gifted actor - that would be nice, I think.
Anyway, there are also lots of nice signature "Gondry" touches that met with murmured approval from the folks I was sat with - invisible cuts, inventive juxtapositions, morphing and suchlike, the majority of them pretty damn impressive and surprisingly subtle. I expected the film to descend into a mess much like Adaptation did, but it held it together very well. The whole thing kind of resonated in an odd way, and I can imagine that if you saw this film after going through some kind of relationship trouble, you would have much the same "oh my god, they're singing about me" feeling that you get after the end of a particularly messy romantic affair.
So, all in all, worth seeing. I'm not really a fan of Gondry or Jonze, but I know the former has his admirers on this board. Those people probably won't be disappointed.
Oh, and there's a Beck cover of "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" in it. It's not very good.
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 5 March 2004 08:23 (twenty-one years ago)
Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman were there for a Q&A afterwards, and they were pretty much exactly as you'd expect them to be, Kaufman made the most visibly uncomfortable interview subject I have ever seen. Michel Gondry had a very strong accent and wore a lot of mismatched colours.
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 5 March 2004 08:24 (twenty-one years ago)