89
Metascore
41 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttNot 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.
- 100PremiereGlenn KennyPremiereGlenn KennyA 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.
- 100Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanWatching Eternal Sunshine, you don't just watch a love story -- you fall in love with what love really is.
- 90VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyIf 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.
- 90TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissKaufman 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.
- 90Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanIt's a baroque and intermittently brilliant brain twister so convoluted that it inevitably deposits the viewer in an alternate universe.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversChases 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.
- 88ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliThis 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.
- 80The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe New YorkerAnthony LaneThere 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]
- 80New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter RainerNew York Magazine (Vulture)Peter RainerFor 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.