10 'Comedies' That Were Secretly Really Depressing

3. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Yes, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind shouldn't really be classified as a straight comedy when the film is a product of so many different genres - but tell that to the people who marketed it. With ELO's cheerful Mr. Blue Sky playing over images of Mark Ruffalo dancing and Jim Carrey being all hilariously exasperated on the trailer, Eternal Sunshine sure did look like a barrel of laughs coming up to release. The reality was much different. Far from the high-concept romantic comedy the promotional material made it out to be, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is director Michel Gondry and (especially) screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's masterpiece of philosophically-loaded agony, ending on a repeated shot that suggests romantic contentment inevitably has to come to an end, no matter how suited the partners are. It's a film that poo-poos Hollywood's definition of romance, and says: "True love? Forget it. Prepare yourself instead for perpetual misery, repeated ad infinitum for all couples until the very end of time."