If it’s possible to be pointless yet entertaining, then “The Science of Sleep” meets the specifications of a quality movie. Despite the fact the movie has no real plot other than whether the guy gets the girl, the way in which the film goes about telling a relatively simple story is otherwise engaging and hard to look away from.

There are points of the film which are simply childish and uninteresting. Stephane, a wildly creative artist, is lured back to his childhood home after his mother promises him a fancy job. However, it turns out to be in the world of copy setting. From the point he finds out that the job he was promised isn’t as advertised, the crazy dream world he creates threatens to disrupt his everyday reality.

That is until Stephanie, his neighbor with an equally lively imagination, comes into his life. It is with her entrance that the film shies away from immaturity and focuses on being adult-minded. The movie’s plot and cinematography suggest it has an adult audience in mind, so when it focuses on delivering itself from the adult mindset, it is relatively charming and delightful to see.

The first quarter of the movie’s content seems to be aimed more at children. The second quarter of the movie’s content seems to be geared toward adults, and the last half of its content is pretty much anyone’s guess. The movie’s plot of the guy getting the girl is there, yet the setting cuts from worlds of dreams and reality making it so hard to follow that it ends up making the whole thing something not worth caring for.

The love between the two characters is genuinely portrayed, but gets lost in the pointlessness of everything that surrounds it. It is the humor, wit and images in “Science of Sleep” that are most interesting to watch, because nothing else seems to mesh in a praiseworthy fashion.

The film is written and directed by Michel Gondry. The name may not sound familiar, but I bet the last movie he directed, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” does. In that movie you had two characters in love who were very easy to identify with. The world of Jim Carrey’s character was imaginary, yes, but at no point was it difficult to see that he was not in reality and that what he was experiencing was building up to a bigger and better pay-off.

The characters in this film offer very little to identify with. Had they been given more identifiable traits, it may have worked a little better. But with the lack of character development, and the confusion of the characters switching from speaking English to Spanish to French, it ends up being a smorgasbord of weirdness with a hint of actual creativity.

I expected much more from the film that was directed by the “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” guy. That movie was one of the better ones of 2004, and still is in the top of my list of favorite movies that involve some form of romanticism. “Science of Sleep” is basically “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” minus character development and a place worth going to.

“Science of Sleep” takes you on a journey to a lot of places, most of them imaginary. But the one place it should take you, the final destination every movie really needs, is the point where some sort of plot element has been resolved. The film takes you there, but the road is bumpy. If not for the evenly spread out sequences that are humorous because of their visuals and not necessarily the contribution to storyline, then it would otherwise be a total waste.