Man on the Moon

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've been an Andy Kaufman fan for quite a while now. True, I was around six when Andy died. But somehow this strange man was able to affect both my work and outlook. So needless to say I was looking forward to this film. And I was not disappointed.

Critics complain that while engaging, this film does not let the viewer in on who exactly Kaufman was. It's simple: there was no real Andy Kaufman. He was socially inept, utterly brilliant, and a strange and distant individual. His sense of humor (if he even had one) was not for everyone to understand. THAT WAS THE POINT. So why should a film spoil the mystery? MAN ON THE MOON was as an homage to Andy, NOT an explanation, and far better than those dull, lifeless documentaries on E! or comedy central in which uninteresting comedians try to explain why Andy was brilliant. It's common knowledge that explaining a joke renders it humorous (a notion that Andy toyed with in his Foreign Man routine, remember?)

True, some facts were altered for dramatic purposes (though the truth is just as interesting), or maybe just necessity, but the base story is still pretty accurate. Some of the more humorous moments in Kaufman's career were not mentioned (i.e. his stints on Johnny Carson and David Letterman, his work with performance artist Laurie Anderson, his street corner preaching). But lets face it, everything couldn't and didn't need to be included. The film is capable of capturing the essence of Kaufman's world. If you want to see everything Kaufman did, find a recording of it and watch that.

Carrey is brilliant as Kaufman. Some call it an imitation, though that seems overly simplified and absurd. That was an imitation along the lines of Geoffrey Rush in SHINE, or Hilary Swank in BOYS DON'T CRY, or Richard Farnsworth in THE STRAIGHT STORY. Sure, Carrey observes and uses the many Kaufman quirks without a fault, but his observation goes far beyond what any other actor seems capable of. Carrey is Andy Kaufman. So many seem unwilling to admit that Carrey can act.

Taken on it's own, MAN ON THE MOON is a magical, funny, and wonderful film. Taken with the rest of the sources currently available on Andy Kaufman, this is just another facet to a complex career and an homage to a brilliant man.

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.

It is truly sad that we have to wait until a person is dead and gone to give him or her the honor they should have received while alive. Andy Kaufman was a man of many talents, and I saw him only as this funny little man on a TV show called, "Taxi" with a cute accent. Who could not fall in love with that person he was on "Taxi"? He was cute, honest, kind, and funny! Who knew that while we were all at home laughing, he was crying on the inside because that wasn't who he was, nor wanted to be. I went to see this movie about a person who was famous for his "Elvis" personation, and his little record player, doing the "Mighty Mouse" skit on Saturday Night Live, never to forget "Latka" on "Taxi." He was a man of many talents, so many that the world never knew about, so many that only Andy knew who he really was. Jim Carrey allowed us to come into Andy Kaufman's mind, and realize that this grown man lived in another place, another time, an entire other world where Andy was free, and there was peace, and where everyone never grew up, they stayed children playing "pretend" forever.

Jim Carrey put himself into this part, he lived this role... He was Andy Kaufman. Carrey was able to show me a whole new light on this man I thought I knew. This funny man who could make you laugh just by walking on stage. Jim Carrey showed us that who we saw, was not the man we thought we knew. And it took his death to show the world that Andy Kaufman was in fact a human being, who just needed a hug, and a chance at what he did best.

This sadness me to realize that our joy brought this man pain, who we wanted was not who he wanted to be, and I think everyone should be able to live the dream they choose. I never cry at movies, because I am able to pull myself back and remind myself that it is just a movie, and those are just actors. Jim was Andy, and what I saw was too true for me to tell myself, "It's only a movie."

This is a story about a man who lived and died without being understood. I cry for the person Carrey brought us into, the life he showed us that was hidden for too long. No one could have given Andy such a life as Carrey did. This movie is not a normal movie, it is art in the most beautiful form imaginable. To sit in a theater and be at aw... for two hours is amazing! I only wish we had known Andy Kaufman when he was truly alive. Now it is too late, the curtain has gone down...