You shouldn't submit to your own prejudices. I'd ordered this from the online DVD store simply because I was determined to watch something different and this had featured pretty consistenly as one of those 'must watch' films.

I resisted chucking it back in the mail when I took the disc out of the envelope and read the words 'love story' on it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm about as romantic as the next guy but if there are two words guaranteed to make a man want to spend the next three hours taking washing the car, it's 'love story'.

Jim Carrey is in love to Kate Winslett. OK, it's not entirely trouble-free (he's an introvert who stays home while she likes to go out and party) but it is love - until an argument leads to Kate Winslett walking out. To add insult to injury, she then has her memory of him erased using a new scientific procedure and now has a new boyfriend.

Outraged, he decides to have his memory of her erased in retaliation. Put into a drug-induced sleep while it is done, he revisits his relationship with her in his mind as it is being removed. Too late, he decides he wants to keep his memories of her but being comatose, is powerless to communicate this to the scientists. Then follows scene after scene where the pair (in his mind) try and evade the marauding memory erasers as the world around them is removed block by block.

Does it all end happily? It depends on your perspective. What it did do was remind me of the diverse forms love can take and how it has the power to overcome (though it doesn't always!)

Not a conventional love story, only soppy in entirely forgiveable (and actually quite appropriate) brief bits, edged with a liberal sense of the absurd, well crafted with lots of excellent camerawork, great performances from all concerned and leaves you thinking at the end.

It is not often a film does this.

Great. Watch it with someone you love. And don't tell them it's a love story.