Man on the Moon

I saw a special sneak preview of "Man on the Moon" last week in Boston. Quite simply, the film is magnificent, and truly provides the audience with a glimpse into the genius of Andy Kaufman. There are moments of true hilarity, and moments that will break your heart.

Of course, this film would be nothing without the inspired performance by Jim Carrey. Within the first moments of the film, you completely forget that it is Jim Carrey on screen. Rarely have I seen an actor truly transform into the persona that he is portraying. Jim Carrey was Andy Kaufman.

At the very least, Mr. Carrey is deserving of every honor that is given in acting. No other performance this year comes even close to this. Without question, this is a film for the ages, and gives everyone a look into the mind of a genius.

Jim Carrey delivers on of the greatest acting achievements of the nineties in this stunning biopic about the legendary comedian Andy Kaufman (the man on the moon, according to REM). For me as a European citizen, Andy Kaufman is a complete mystery. I've never seen any of his performances in Saturday Night Live nor have I ever seen any of his live shows. After seeing the movie five times, I as a Dutch not-knowing citizen who had never heard of Kaufman before, can make an image of the man and his brilliance. This is all thanks to Milos Forman and a stunning Jim Carrey, who really becomes Andy Kaufman. According to me, this movie is where Jim Carrey proves that he is just more than a funny guy, and after seeing him in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Carrey has really proved that he is in fact a character actor.

Man on the Moon is one of the most heart-felt endeavors I've ever seen on film. With each frame, you can feel how much the project means personally to all involved, especially to star Jim Carrey and producer Bob Zmuda. Although personal adoration for the subject of one's movie does not always translate into a film that audience members will identify with, Man on the Moon succeeds brilliantly. Between Milos Forman's unique directing style, the actors' performances, and Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's writing, the film is able to simultaneously make you a member in one of Andy Kaufman's audiences, experiencing both joy and frustration at his antics, and a close friend who sees, or thinks they see, the Andy Kaufman behind the masks. Just as Karaszewski and Alexander did with the Ed Wood or Larry Flint biopicks, they challenge our concept of what it means to be successful by giving dignity to to the seeming misfits of our society. However, a biopick like Man on the Moon succeeds or fails mainly on the grounds of the lead performance. Jim Carrey proved his dramatic talent last year with a performance in The Truman Show that should have translated into an Oscar, and this year he again gives what will likely be the best performance of the year. Carrey approaches the role of Kaufman with a level of professionalism and enthusiasm far greater than that displayed by many of today's acclaimed actors. Carrey adopts Kaufman's mannerisms flawlessly and becomes Kaufman so convincingly that you forget Carrey is acting. The film's other stars, in particular Paul Giamatti, Courtney Love, and Danny DeVito, all turn in excellent performances as well.

Man on the Moon is both inspiring and thought provoking - a must see.

I was in high school during the Taxi years & heyday of Andy Kaufman, and all I remember are the sensational rumors about how he developed a split personality, became obsessed with wrestling women (jello wrestling, as I heard it), and publicly self-destructed before disappearing into obscurity (I never even knew he died). Of course, that's not how it happened, but that was the chatter you'd hear in the hallways between classes.

This film is like the quintessential dispelling of a myth. Santa Claus is revealed, the Easter Bunny unmasked. Oddly enough, what we find beneath the shticky exterior is even more shticky than before. And we learn that the man was successful at what he did because he truly lived it.

Doubtlessly, you've heard Kaufman admirers refer to him as a genius, ahead of his time, and all the other obligatory accolades that are heaped on a misunderstood artist. But for the first time, I now understand why all these things are true, and if you watch this movie--whether you love him or hate him--you too will understand why he the outrageous things that he did.

Furthermore, this film may help give you an understanding of other bizarre artists. I'm beginning to appreciate what drives other avant-garde artists like Picasso, Godard & the Sex Pistols. But this is a lesson you'll never get in any documentary or art appreciation class. Here through comedy--the most un-pretentious art form--we can truly enjoy the madness without all the highbrow beard-stroking that often clouds the subject. Here we have it plain & simple, the cartoon version: the story of an artist who led a revolution.

Watch this movie. Then go to YouTube and watch the original clips of Andy Kaufman ...his wrestling exploits, his bizarre appearances on Letterman, his strange but true reading of The Great Gatsby before a confused and peevish crowd. This movie is the long-awaited explanation of all the madness.

I was expecting to see a depressing, tragic film about a young man's spiral into insanity and oblivion. Instead, I found the story of Andy Kaufman to be the ultimate victory, and I find myself strangely energized by the whole experience. The whole thing comes down to one laugh (in that powerful scene in the Philippines near the end). Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry ...and the world laughs with you :D

Your fondness for `Man on the Moon' may well be predicated on your feelings for Andy Kaufman, both as comic performer and offstage human being. And, as this film suggests, there was not, ultimately, a very wide gap between the two. Indeed, the point of the film seems to be that, with Kaufman, the many characters he showed to us on stage and T.V. pretty much reflected the man who existed in real life.

This may be both the strength and the weakness of the movie itself. Kaufman's purported genius has always eluded me. Ostensibly, it lay, I imagine, in his metaphorically giving the finger to his audience while entertaining them at the same time. That audience, ultimately discovering that it was the butt of the joke, then was able to go a step further and become a willing part of the act, allowing them all to feel superior to the uninitiated masses still deluded enough to be on the outside looking in. Kaufman's act became, then, a kind of exclusive comic club, a collective act of defiance against the social norms of theatrical convention and good taste. Thus, we see him in the film reading the entire novel `The Great Gatsby' verbatim to a stunned and ultimately hostile college audience; we see him wrestling women while spouting inflammatory chauvinistic rhetoric and deliberately muffing his lines on live national television in a brilliant blurring of the line between reality and theatricality. The problem, however, is that iconoclasm has never been a source of humor in itself, and much of Kaufman's act and persona came across as heavy-handed, smug and self-conscious, particularly in his grating Lithuanian `Taxi' character. In short, Kaufman always seemed too full of himself and so dazzled by his own cleverness and cuteness to ever be truly funny. It was like he was always pointing his thumbs back at himself saying, `Look how funny I am.' Such unctiousness inspires us not to laugh.

The film itself is an uneven study of the man. The first half is particularly shaky. After a clever 5-minute view of Kaufman as a performance-obsessed child, we move to his young adulthood where we see him bombing in a local nightclub with an act so aggressively unfunny that we cannot even imagine that it could possibly be real. Then, virtually in the blink of an eye, he is discovered by his future manager, again, in a scene of staggering incredibility, in which Kaufman somehow manages to reduce his audience to helpless laughter with material that couldn't possibly evoke even titters let alone room-shaking guffaws. Before we know it, Kaufman has somehow landed a hosting job on `Saturday Night Live' (yet another bad performance) and has become so much in demand that he not only secures a role in a new sitcom, `Taxi,' but is allowed to make all sorts of demands from the producers in exchange for his services. The chronicle of his meteoric rise to fame simply lacks the detail necessary to make it credible.

The movie finds surer footing as it moves ahead in time. If anything, the gross lack of humor of many of his performances recreated for the film simply underlines the overrated comic gifts of Kaufman himself. Although the writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karasczewski, and director, Milos Forman, convey an obvious attitude of affection towards Kaufman, they do not shy away from portraying the self-centered petulance that governed many of his actions both in his professional and personal life. The most poignant moments come when he discovers he has lung cancer, yet cannot convince many of the people who are closest to him that he is really sick, so skeptical has his life of duplicity made them. Though Courtney Love is very good indeed as the woman who learns to love Kauffman, the portrayals of her character and their relationship as a whole remain sketchy and superficial throughout. We never really sense much chemistry between them since they never seem to experience much in the way of revelatory conflict. She simply loves him unconditionally, and she is given little to do but beam pleasantly at him or look perpetually concerned for his health and well being.

`Man on the Moon's one element of undeniable brilliance lies in the triumphant performance of Jim Carrey in the starring role. In physical appearance, in mannerisms, in comic stylings, he, quite literally, becomes Andy Kaufman! Whether on stage or behind-the-scenes, Carrey never hits a false note, displaying his uncanny ability to bring out the humanity that might easily have been lost in a portrayal of a very eccentric comic artist. Indeed, Carrey lends some much needed depth to a screenplay that, in its bare-bone plotting, often seems undernourished and underfed. `Man on the Moon' becomes, ultimately then, more compelling as a steppingstone in Carrey's development as an artist than as an elegy for the artist who once was.