adaptation is crapola

& i liked "being john malcovich" a lot

but maybe I've got it all wrong.

Also, best plot in a movie... EVER.

Fritz: since Susan is a part of Donald is a part of Charlie (see 'The Three'; victim + cop + murderer), I don't think it's fair to say that Donald was made fun of any more than anybody else was. Yeah, he's the victim of Charlie's scorn, but where is the movie's directed at?

Also: what exactly was so Andy Kaufman about it, David?

there were all these assumptions made about this film's audience earlier in the thread - is this fictional 'ssssss'ing audience really the kind who want car chases and gator fights and sex and drugs? if you're being consistent, no they're not. this ile-proscribed audience could be sitting around the dinner table with susan's husband and all those other 'horrible' 1-dimensional people that charlie made fun of at the beginning.

That said, once I stopped concentrating of the novelty of the concept (which, I am reluctant to add, is not all that different from a similar schtick pulled in Spaceballs, of all films) and thought more about the Donald/Charlie/Susan axis, I started thinking that maybe I liked it after all. Now I think the movie-writing-itself thing may be a bit of a red herring, and that the real meat of the movie lies with these three characters, and the way they evolve in Charlie's head.

So yeah. I really do need to see it again.

And, as I mentioned in a different thread, it's essentially a poor man's recapitulation of Tristram Shandy.

but when push comes to shove I'm with Almodovar

You need to be pushed to make that decision?

Still, the portrayal of Charlie's agent is hysterical, Chris Cooper gives a phenomenal performance as John Laroche, and there are genuinely funny moments scattered throughout the film. The movie succeeds at documenting the difficulty of the writing process, the complex relationships between writers and their work, writers and other writers, and writers and other writer's work...not to mention their friends families lovers and characters. Despite the conflation of so many storylines, Adaptation still manages to dramatize a flower both by showing the orchid's innate interest, and its value as an ever-shifting metaphor in the lives of various people and cultures involved with it. Easier said than done.

If there was more rage in the script, perhaps it would have dissolved into self-referential madness much like the ending of Eggers' first novel. Instead I was expecting them to mock the idea of following Hollywood's rules by the ending, instead, they mostly (earnestly) follow those rules and produce a mundane sappy conclusion...which by now the audience is even more aware of as crap because the whole beginning of the movie has spent so much time contrasting the crass flippant nature of Hollywood blockbusters with the (pardon the pun) flowery yet artful prose of best-sellers like The Orchid Thief.

The final visual metaphor of daisies ('pushing up daisies') seem to represent the artistic death of the movie. This feels like a cop-out and a put-on. I can understand why someone would then feel like this was a movie which despised its audience. You can't intentionally put real people on the screen as fictional characters when the story is about the fictionalization of those people without removing the audience from the fantasy of the film. In some sense what we experience is going to be 'real.' It simply didn't work to then attempt to thrust the audience back into fantasy by using transparent devices.

While the script lacks the staggering originality of Being John Malcovich, Adaptation is not "crapola" (Kangaroo Jack is crapola). Adaptation is overbearing, confused, duplicitous, and possibly fatally flawed; but it's also a stimulating, entertaining, and at times beautiful film.

this is the funniest review of this movie I've seen yet.

as for the problematic ending. as i get more distance from it, I'm starting to really appreciate the ending's meta-commentary re: adapt anything and Hollywood will Hollywoodize it. but at the time, I was annoyed when the lights came up.

A Sullivans's Travels for today.

why the "; but it's also" fuckos?

THIS.DOESNT.MEAN.ANYTHING.SHOCKAH!!!!

true, and irrelevant.

(Quite aside from the "If this turnip were a Remington rifle, nobody would vote for Nixon" perplexity of the whole idea)

Seriously, the accusation that the movie is aimed at pseudo-intellectual poseurs is so asinine. You could say that about any intelligent movie and then retreat to your OWN world of pseudo-intellectual smugness, thinking, "Ha, I'm so clever I saw right through that," and then feel superior over anyone who was stupid enough to enjoy it.

It's a movie about movies. It's a movie you can enjoy on different levels and it's also a movie you don't have to examine on any deep "levels" to enjoy, because it's entertaining. It seems to me that the people who are slamming it are people who, for reasons which elude me but which I think have to do with their own pretentiousness, have consciously talked themselves out of enjoying something that they probably liked, but, you know, liking things isn't hip enough for them or whatever.