Square and simple-minded filmmaking. Jim Carrey plays a troubled b-movie screenwriter in 1951 Hollywood who suffers amnesia after smacking his head following an auto accident; he washes ashore on a picture-postcard coastal town full of lovable codgers and all-American townsfolk who believe he's a soldier thought dead after the war (the fit and well-scrubbed Carrey hardly looks like a battle-scarred war veteran!). Director Frank Darabont, working from a dewy screenplay by Michael Sloane, aims for no higher ambition than tugging at viewers' heartstrings; the two men pile on the presumed-need for warm nostalgia in attempt to make an emotional connection with a mass audience, when actually just some smart writing would suffice. There isn't a wet cinematic cliché that Sloane doesn't try to resurrect, while Carrey (reeling it in for prestige) drifts through the picture staring at everyone's top shirt button. The film isn't a disaster--it's handsomely made, and the car crash is amusingly carried off--but it's a ringer, a substitute for Preston Sturges. *1/2 from ****