Man on the Moon

Biographies of strange people have always fascinated me, and this is no exception. And "strange" doesn't really seem to adequately describe real-life comedian Andy Kauffman. He was REALLY different, many times very offensive, sometimes very unfunny....but always extremely interesting and certainly unique.

Jim Carrey shows us once again how comedians can be such good dramatic actors. Carrey is outstanding in this role, and perfect for it. The rest of the cast is good, too, from Danny DeVito to Paul Giamatti to Courtney Love.

Right from the beginning of this movie one sees how original it is, and how original Kaufman was as a comedian. His routines, antics and put-ons are so realistically done that no thinks they are just that. Unfortunately, his "jokes" don't always go over so well, aren't appreciated by most audiences and he is not always the most likable entertainer you will ever see. That means - be forewarned - that there are a number of unpleasant scenes in this film. You have to really appreciate Kauffman's absurd humor and to appreciate Carrey's great portrait of this man.

On multiple viewings (I've seen it four times) I liked this film even more than the first time, even though I knew the surprises. I don't know of any comedian - to this day - who deliberately tried to annoy his audience or truly liked it when his audience hated him. I cannot believe he had the nerve to do the things he did. In summary, this is a fascinating biography, to say the least.

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", indeed. I remember seeing Andy Kaufman's act on TV as a teenager, and I admit, I wrote him off as another comedian, with an incredibly expressive face and a flair for silliness. Years later, I'm watching him on "Taxi" reruns. I admired the easiness where he could go from loving Latka to malicious Vic with ease, and I thought, "Wow, this guy really loves what he does". And then I watch "Man on The Moon". Reality check.

This picture, I believe, redeems Andy Kaufman. He endured five grueling years in "Taxi" just so he could get some laughs out of people. He did wrestling stints just for the heck of it. He came real close of hitting rock bottom just to save himself at the end. He died of cancer at the age of 35, ridiculously young, and even then his own family didn't buy it. He lived misunderstood, and died misunderstood. And years later, he gets a biopic. Just what he deserves. It is sad that many people will know Andy's talent and understand him only after watching this film. But still, let's face it, at the end he did get the last laugh.

The true cornerstone in this film is Jim Carrey. Yes, you've heard endless reviews about him immersing himself into Andy, not just playing him. But this is acting beyond your dreams, trust me. Especially when he plays Andy's foreign character, Carrey lived and breathed Kaufman air. This is the movie where his silly-putty face comes handy, as it seems to help Jim turn into Andy. (If only we could do something about those teeth...) NEWSFLASH FOR THE ACADEMY: Jim Carrey can act!!! I remember Tom Hanks beginning with the same kind of movies that Jim did: loud, colorful, goofy and silly (films like "Bachelor Party" come to mind). Then he did "Big", then came "Philadelphia". When is Carrey's "Philadelphia" coming along? I can't wait to see him at the Academy Awards this year.

Man on the moon, indeed.

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.

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.