http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger.
Susan Granger's review of "MAN ON THE MOON" (Universal Pictures)
Don't miss the beginning - it's the most imaginative and hilarious part. Facing the camera, Jim Carrey establishes immediately that he's completely captured the eye-bulging essence of the late comedian Andy Kaufman. His impersonation is nothing short of brilliant, even Oscar-worthy. That having been acknowledged, the movie itself leaves a lot to be desired. First, it's not really a movie. It's simply the embodiment of an objectionable character whom people either adored or loathed. Director Milos Foreman and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the trio who did The People vs. Larry Flynt, don't attempt an analysis or even offer psychological insight into the complex, enigmatic nature of this definitely unhinged, obviously neurotic, and perhaps psychotic performer. Instead, we simply watch his progress from comedy clubs, like the Improv, to Saturday Night Live, to TV's Taxi along with his relentless self-destruction, aided and abetted by his writer/sidekick Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti). Danny DeVito's superb as his agent, observing: "You're insane - but you might also be brilliant." Kaufman meets his girlfriend (Courtney Love) in a wrestling challenge but she too is a cipher. They have only one revelatory moment together when he whines, "You don't know the real me." And she replies, "There isn't a real you." And then, at age 35, cancer strikes. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, Man on the Moon is a strange, shallow 6. Who was this Andy Kaufman - and why did he love to provoke people? That's never answered in this uneven, two-hour compilation of comedy shtick. Even DeVito asks, "What's the point?"
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews