Sad memories are the worst kind. Of all the memories, these are the ones that can flip the switch of a day at a moment’s notice. It could be the waft of a familiar fragrance once worn by a significant other who has since left your life. Or it might be a forgotten song that pops up on a playlist, instantly transporting you to the time and place you first heard it. Or perhaps it’s a photo, once a bookmark now wedged between a pair of books, that falls to the floor when reorganizing a room and evokes a memory you weren’t prepared to face on a particular day. If we could rid ourselves of our sad memories so that we no longer need to experience the pain associated with them, would we? Some of us would do this in a heartbeat, while others would never choose to do something so drastic. Most of us lie in between, and our resiliency to these emotional triggers places us somewhere along that spectrum. Michel Gondry’s (The Green Hornet, Be Kind Rewind) universally revered cult classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
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Though we primarily know him for his slapstick comedy (The Cable Guy, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venture: Pet Detective), Jim Carrey has proved on numerous occasions that he can do very well what many other people in his genre cannot…he can give riveting and believable performances in both light-hearted and heavy dramas. He’s done it with The Truman Show (where he was spectacular and deserving of an Oscar nomination) as well as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And he does it with 1999’s Man on the Man that, with respect to The Truman Show, is his finest performance as an actor in any genre. Carrey’s biopic of Andy Kaufman is a movie that I’ve had on my list to see for years, but one that I never felt “in the mood” for. It’s not that I expected to be disappointed by it (with just a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew this movie would be hit or miss for me). Instead, I just knew that it would be a different kind of movie and that, like many Jim Carrey movies, I’d have to be prepared for anything. I liked The Truman Show a lot and appreciated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But I’m not a Jim Carrey fan by any means. I don’t think he’s that funny at all. If he retired tomorrow and never acted again, I would be perfectly okay with that. With that said, I did enjoy Man on the Moon, and Carrey was the perfect person to portray Andy Kaufman. This was the role that Carrey was born to play. Regardless if you are a fan of his or not, I think this is a movie that everyone should see because you’ll learn so much about Kaufman. And if you’re like me, you probably have heard his name a lot but know very little about him.
Continue reading Man on the Moon (1999) →
Movies I Watch That Inspire Me to Critique!