Adaptation

December 15, 2002

I caught the latest Spike Jonez/Charlie Kaufman collaboration, Adaptation, sometime last week. It’s all a bit much to try and explain, but the basic idea is that Nicholas Cage plays Charlie Kaufmann, who is trying to adapt an unadaptable book by Susan Orlean called “The Orchid Thief.” So it’s a movie about a writer adapting a screenplay of a book for a movie that you are currently watching.

It’s all a bit too meta and self involved sometimes, but for the most part it’s very entertaining and filled with some really charming performances. Cage is sharp as the nervous, self loathing Charlie Kaufman as well as his annoyingly gregarious twin brother Donald. There are nice bits all around from Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep and Bryan Cox as well.

This sentence won’t really make any sense until you’ve seen the movie, but I’ll say it anyway. The movie goes downhill at a stupendous rate once the re-writes start.

Posted in Moving Pictures