Disrespectful, bizarre - and utterly brilliant

Rating: 8/10 (28 May 2000)

Director Spike Jonze's first full-length feature is a work of demented genius. Jonze, whose previous work includes the video for Fat Boy Slim's Praise You and a small role in David Russell's 'Three Kings', has created something virtually unique: a film far too bizarre to ever get studio interest, but with main-stream stars and a world-wide release.

Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a brilliant but pretentious and egotistical puppeteer. His frumpy animal-obsessed wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz, looking plain  I told you this was weird) urges him to get a proper job, which he eventually does, sorting files on floor 7 ½ of an office building, where the ceiling is so low he is forced to crouch all the time. There he meets a very attractive woman (Catherine Keener) who isn't at all interested in him until he finds a magical portal into the mind of John Malkovich. She suggests charging $200 for fifteen minutes in the great man's head, after which the passenger is dumped onto the verge by the New Jersey turnpike.

To explain any more of the (increasingly odd) plot would only convince you not to watch this film. This would be a bad decision, as Jonze handles the idea (by Charlie Kaufman  arrest this man, he must be a danger to society) with a deftness that astounds. The ridiculous concept is only half of the film  the reactions to the supernatural are the real charm. The concept is not clouded by philosophical considerations of self, as Schwartz naively believes, but by love, jealousy and greed.
Of course, this turns on the central performances. Malkovich is wonderful as himself and adapts his performance brilliantly as the plot requires. Cusack bravely loses all attractive character traits to create Craig, a jealous impotent idiot with ideas above (and indeed, outside of) his head and Diaz is equally remarkable as the wacky Lotte. It is Catherine Keener however, who steals the film with a display of such massive selfishness and egotism that she fully deserved her recent Oscar nomination. These performances, and a host of cameos, some less than a second (spot Winona Ryder and Jennifer Aniston), really make a film that is in danger of being a little too weird. I have no idea how this got made, but thank goodness it did  it waves two fingers at Hollywood and runs off giggling.