Release CalendarTop 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV NewsIndia TV Spotlight
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsBest Picture WinnersBest Picture WinnersIndependent Spirit AwardsWomen's History MonthSXSWSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • All
  • Titles
  • TV Episodes
  • Celebs
  • Companies
  • Keywords
  • Advanced Search
Watchlist
Sign In
Sign In
New Customer? Create account
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Man on the Moon

  • 19991999
  • RR
  • 1h 58m
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
133K
YOUR RATING
Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
Home Video Trailer from Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Play trailer2:25
1 Video
99+ Photos
BiographyComedyDrama
The life and career of legendary comedian Andy Kaufman.The life and career of legendary comedian Andy Kaufman.The life and career of legendary comedian Andy Kaufman.
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
133K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Milos Forman
  • Writers
    • Scott Alexander
    • Larry Karaszewski
  • Stars
    • Jim Carrey
    • Danny DeVito
    • Gerry Becker
  • Director
    • Milos Forman
  • Writers
    • Scott Alexander
    • Larry Karaszewski
  • Stars
    • Jim Carrey
    • Danny DeVito
    • Gerry Becker
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 590User reviews
    • 132Critic reviews
    • 58Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 5 wins & 25 nominations

    Videos1

    Man on the Moon
    Trailer 2:25
    Watch Man on the Moon

    Photos116

    Jim Carrey, Danielle Burgio, Linda Cevallos, Betsy Chang, Jennifer Chavarria, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Shirry Dolgin, Lisa Eaton, and Melanie A. Gage in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey and Paul Giamatti in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey and Courtney Love in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey, Lonnie Hamilton, and Ron Sanchez in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Courtney Love in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Jim Carrey and Danny DeVito in Man on the Moon (1999)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Jim Carrey
    Jim Carrey
    • Andy Kaufman
    • (as Tony Clifton)
    Danny DeVito
    Danny DeVito
    • George Shapiro
    Gerry Becker
    Gerry Becker
    • Stanley Kaufman - Andy's Father
    Greyson Erik Pendry
    • Little Michael Kaufman
    • (as Greyson Pendry)
    Brittany Colonna
    Brittany Colonna
    • Baby Carol Kaufman
    Leslie Lyles
    • Janice Kaufman - Andy's Mother
    Bobby Boriello
    Bobby Boriello
    • Little Andy Kaufman
    George Shapiro
    • Mr. Besserman
    Budd Friedman
    Budd Friedman
    • Budd Friedman
    Tom Dreesen
    Tom Dreesen
    • Wiseass Comic
    Thomas Armbruster
    • Improv Piano Player
    Pamela Abdy
    Pamela Abdy
    • Diane Barnett
    Wendy Polland
    • Little Wendy
    Cash Oshman
    • Yogi
    Matt Price
    Matt Price
    • Meditation Student
    Christina Cabot
    Christina Cabot
    • Meditation Student
    Richard Belzer
    Richard Belzer
    • Richard Belzer
    Melanie Vesey
    Melanie Vesey
    • Carol Kaufman
    • Director
      • Milos Forman
    • Writers
      • Scott Alexander
      • Larry Karaszewski
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    Double Take: Showstopping Biopic Transformations

    Double Take: Showstopping Biopic Transformations

    We've rounded up some of the best biopic transformations, including Academy Award nominee Ana de Armas in Blonde.
    See the full gallery
    [object Object]
    Photos

    More like this

    Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond
    7.6
    Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond
    The Cable Guy
    6.1
    The Cable Guy
    Me, Myself & Irene
    6.6
    Me, Myself & Irene
    The People vs. Larry Flynt
    7.3
    The People vs. Larry Flynt
    Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
    6.4
    Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
    Liar Liar
    6.9
    Liar Liar
    Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
    6.9
    Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
    Dumb and Dumber
    7.3
    Dumb and Dumber
    The Mask
    6.9
    The Mask
    Yes Man
    6.8
    Yes Man
    Bruce Almighty
    6.8
    Bruce Almighty
    I Love You Phillip Morris
    6.6
    I Love You Phillip Morris

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      A man impersonating Gary Oldman discussed the project with an unsuspecting Danny DeVito for months and even submitted an audition tape to Milos Forman. The real Gary Oldman had passed on the role of Andy Kaufman months earlier, and became aware of the scam after he found his name listed as one of the actors auditioning for the part.
    • Goofs
      Andy is playing a Ms. Pac-Man (1982) arcade machine, when George tells him that the producers of Taxi (1978) agreed to his terms. That's three years before the game came out.
    • Quotes

      George Shapiro: Andy, you have to look inside and ask this question: who are you trying to entertain - the audience or yourself?

    • Crazy credits
      The credits lists Tony Clifton as himself. Tony Clifton was a character created by Andy Kaufman, and was portrayed by Andy or Bob Zmuda in real life (and by Jim Carrey in the movie).
    • Alternate versions
      Several scenes were shot but cut. These include:
      • The cast of Taxi rehearsing with a stand-in substituting for Andy.
      • Andy responding to fan mail from some attractive girls.
      • Andy taking a girl out on a date and acting so weird she asks to go home.
      • After the Tony Clifton fiasco on the Taxi set, Andy calling Ed Weinberger and thanking him for playing along so convincingly.
      • A scene backstage after Andy "hurts" his neck at the wrestling match where his worried parents come to see if he is okay.
      • A scene towards the end of the movie at the Improv Club where Andy resurrects his Foreign Man routine and is "heckled" by Zmuda posing as an audience member.
    • Connections
      Edited into Funny or Die Presents...: Fifty Shades of DeVito (2018)
    • Soundtracks
      Also Sprach Zarathustra
      Written by Richard Strauss

      Arranged by Charlie Brissette

    User reviews590

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    great Carrey performance in an uneven film
    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.
    helpful•78
    26
    • Buddy-51
    • Jun 10, 2000

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 22, 1999 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United Kingdom
      • Germany
      • Japan
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Andy Kaufman
    • Filming locations
      • Baguio City, Benguet, Philippines
    • Production companies
      • Universal Pictures
      • Mutual Film Company
      • Jersey Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $82,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $34,607,430
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $7,515,585
      • Dec 26, 1999
    • Gross worldwide
      • $47,434,430
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 58 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • DTS
      • Dolby Digital
      • SDDS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.39 : 1

    Related news

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999)
    Top Gap
    By what name was Man on the Moon (1999) officially released in India in Hindi?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    • Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • IMDb Developer
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2023 by IMDb.com, Inc.