Though Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and 17 again belong to different genres, they explore similar concepts. They maintain that choices that we make in life are the best.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind revolves around the concept of erasing memories. After a series of fights Kate Winslet decides to erase Jim Carrey, her lover, from her memory. She hires Lacuna Inc. for this purpose. When Jim Carrey gets to know this, he decides to do the same. During the course of the procedure, he realizes that his relationship has been too beautiful to be erased from his memory. During the whole procedure he is subconscious and within his mind he fights to retain her memories. Nevertheless, he loses all the memories that are related to her. Both of them now have no memories of each other and one day they meet accidentally and are immediately attracted to each other. Similarly, the secretary of Lacuna Inc has a crush on the doctor of the company and later on finds out that she was in a relationship with him before she underwent the procedure to remove their relationship from her memory.

In 17 Again, a 37 year old guy is upset about a decision he took at the age of 17. At the age of 17 he is a successful basketball player and has a bright future with a scholarship to college. When he gets to know that his girlfriend is pregnant, he leaves his career and starts a family. Without a degree at the age of 37, he is devoid of opportunities in his office and blames his family for his ‘failure’ to do well in life. He wishes that he was 17 again to choose the other path and hurray! he is 17 again. The story goes on and at the end he realizes that the decision to choose his pregnant girlfriend over scholarship to college was the best he could have taken.

Both these stories talk about ‘regrets’ in life. In 17 again, the 37 year old guy blames his wife for an unsuccessful career and wants to go away from her. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the ‘momentary’ burden of the relationship is so heavy on them that they want to erase their love relationship from their minds to lead a new life or in other words choose again. But in both movies they are unable to choose differently. 17 again is a light-hearted movie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a serious science fiction movie. The idea of ‘no choices in life’ is completely laughable in 17 again and makes you brush it aside but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind makes an impact. However, the impact is absolutely short-lived, as the movie over-exploits its core concept of erasing memories and fails to meet my expectations.