Adaptation

My rating: 5 - Brilliant!

This movie is so amazingly good, that it got me out of my terminal depression. The floor needs a good shampooing.

I'm so happy that I can't deny that Charlie Kaufman is a genius. Or that Nicolas Cage is, when he wants to be, a superb actor. Or that Chris Cooper is the best thing going on the big screen. While I've never seen the appeal of Meryl Streep, she's here and I do recognize her acting chops. Now, add these all together with one of those obnoxious, nazel-gaving novels that the New Yorker loves and what do you get?

Adaptation

This movie reminded me of times back when Hitchcock was alive and Abbott & Costello were dominating the comedy circuit with their wit and charm; everything was copasetic and if you scratched the surface of the presentation, there were sufficient layers of complexity and imagination beneath to boggle the mind. Chock-filled with puns, humor, whackiness, satire, and intelligence, Adaptation is the best thing I have seen in years.

The story is a recursive twister, referential to other Kaufman flicks. Superficially, it deals with a screenwriter's struggles to adapt a completely un-movie workable book into movie form. The book is about some fella who wades into the everglades and steals endangered orchids. From there, the movie goes on to a satire of the writing process, Hollywood, the System, and of itself. By the end, there are so many layers of satire that, if they were mattresses, even the princess wouldn't have felt the pea.

The best part? The idiotic products of the American education system sitting next to me and my oxygen tank said, and I quote: "this movie is weird" and "what is a day-ush mackeena?". Morons. Morons who happen to be exactly the kind of morons that the movie ridicules... but who are too stupid to get it. It was a delicious, cackle-worthy moment, right up there with the all-you-can-eat lobster at the Appleseed Buffet.

Adaptation is a stunning work, and I can't encourage you strongly enough to buy, rent, or steal this movie. Go. Now.