A creative and weird movie.

Rating: 9/10 (9 November 1999)

This is a bizarre film with a bizarre story. However, it is a very creative story. Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) gets a job at a company on the 7 1/2 floor of a office building. While organizing some files, Craig finds a door behind a filing cabnet. Inside the door is a portal into another world, the world of another person. Craig can experience thoughts, feelings, and see the actions of this other person. The only thing, it that this other person is famous actor John Malkovich! However, Craig can only experince this for only 15 minutes, then he winds up on the side of the road at the New Jersey turnpike. Craig and his sexy co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener) see this door as a money profit business. Yet, Craig has also fallen in love with Maxine, eventhough he's already married to an animal loving pet store owner, Lotte (Cameron Diaz). From there on is a wild and twisted story that keeps going up hill until the very end. I have never seen a film quite like this one. This seems like something that former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam would have thought of. It's very creative, and at the same time twisted, strange, and very very funny! I thought the idea of a building being on the 7 1/2 floor was creative, but there's a lot more creative images and settings than just that scene. And the dialogue is also very witty! With such lines
like "Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate," is the most wittiest lines that I have heard actors give since the Marx Brothers. The acting is also very well done. John Cusack is excellent, as usual, as the man who torn between two women, seeing the world through two people. Cameron Diaz took a big risk playing a non-glamorous role, and she still manages to pull through. Catherine Keener is also great as the seductive co-worker who has plans of her own. And of course, John Malkovich himself is also very enjoyable as, well, himself. But Malkovich is such a great sport, that he even allows the story to make fun of himself. Director Spike Jonze (Vig from THREE KINGS) is going to be a popular director because of this film. He directs the film along the same simialr lines as a Terry Gilliam film: dark, bizarre, and funny. And writer Charlie Kaufman shows a promising career with this being his first major film. I would be very upset if this film doesn't get a Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, it deserves it! ***** (out of five)