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13 December 1999 | The Hollywood Reporter | See recent The Hollywood Reporter news »

Andy Kaufman still haunts our collective psyche 15 years after his early death, and the spectacle of seeing Jim Carrey transform himself into Kaufman will receive deserved critical praise. But Kaufman's act remains an acquired taste, one that is off-putting to many (as the movie makes amply clear). "Man on the Moon" enters the holiday market as a sleeper that, much like a Kaufman performance, may be a break-out hit or fall very flat.

Making a movie about Kaufman is like trying to pin Jell-O to a wall. There's no way to get at the "real" Andy Kaufman because it's very possible that part of his personality never existed -- or if it did, it got lost in Kaufman's psyche. So what a team of highly talented filmmakers -- screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, director Milos Forman and Carrey -- have managed to do in "Man on the Moon" is less a biopic than an assemblage of Kaufman's greatest hits as a comic.

Here we get the most famous, infamous, outrageous, innovative and mouth-dropping stunts from one of the quirkiest careers in the annals of show business. But how audiences will respond is not easy to predict.

Kaufman never liked being called a comic. He was closer to a performance artist. He assumed a number of guises -- wrestler, immigrant, Elvis Presley, lounge singer Tony Clifton, evangelist, robot butler and fakir. But his refusal to break character -- to let audiences realize it's all a gag -- often pushed the act into an uncomfortable area where the line between reality and illusion blurred.

Kaufman's anti-comedy causes his manager and mentor, George Shapiro, played by Danny DeVito, to declare at one point, "You're insane, but you might be brilliant!"

After a gangbuster opening, in which Carrey as Kaufman introduces his movie -- easily the funniest and most original new material in the entire movie -- "Man on the Moon" struggles to tell in a conventional, linear manner the story of this most unconventional of entertainers.

The writers at some point must have abandoned any hope of explaining their hero, for they don't even make the attempt. Instead we get highlights of Kaufman's performances on stage and television and a few key moments in his life.

And a few weird scenes where Carrey's Kaufman performs in the hit TV series "Taxi" with its original cast members -- Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, Marilu Henner -- while DeVito, another series co-star, plays an entirely different character.

Forman and the writers never seem certain what part of Kaufman's life is put-on and what is not -- the insane vs. brilliant conundrum -- so they play everything straight, leaving the audience to decide.

It's impossible -- repeat, impossible -- to imagine any other actor in the role of Kaufman. Carrey so invades the personality and physical being of Kaufman as to perform a virtual act of transmigration. It's eerie and wonderful and the main reason to see this movie.

Courtney Love, rejoining the team with whom she made "The People vs. Larry Flynt", delivers a winsome and tender portrayal of Lynne Margulies, the editor who was Kaufman's last love. (The film never mentions any of Kaufman's other love affairs.)

Paul Giamatti ably plays Bob Zmuda, Kaufman's writer and co-conspirator in his act, making him the perfect foil for Carrey -- sane, grounded and the one person who definitely understands Kaufman.

DeVito has given himself a really unenviable role as Shapiro, who is portrayed as an eternal kvetch, in scene after scene complaining to Andy about his risky avant garde act and forever trying to tone him down.

The film ultimately disappoints because it doesn't share its subject's sense of the outrageous. It's too tame and conventional. The opening credit sequence by Carrey points the way to a more free-form examination of Kaufman. But Forman et al. choose not to go there. Maybe the producers should have hired Tony Clifton to direct.

MAN ON THE MOON

Universal Pictures

Jersey Films

Producers: Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher

Director: Milos Forman

Screenwriters: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski

Executive producers: George Shapiro, Howard West, Michael Hausman

Director of photography: Anastas Michos

Production designer: Patrizia Von Brandenstein

Music: R.E.M.

Co-executive producer: Bob Zmuda

Costume designer: Jeffrey Kurland

Editors: Christopher Tellefsen, Lynzee Klingman

Color/stereo

Cast:

Andy Kaufman: Jim Carrey

George Shapiro: Danny DeVito

Bob Zmuda: Paul Giamatti

Lynne Margulies: Courtney Love

Running time -- 118 minutes

MPAA rating: R

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1 item from 1999