Milos Forman Does It Again!

Rating: 10/10 (29 April 2000)

Man on the Moon, from the director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, and The People vs. Larry Flynt is nothing short of a pop-culture masterpiece. Forman reunited with the writers of Larry Flynt for this sensational---I hate to call it a biopic because it's so much more--this sensational film about the life of the late entertainer Andy Kaufman. It seems that there is no half-way on this film. Almost everybody I talked to either loved it or hated it. This depended largely on how you felt about Andy Kaufman's humor. I think that those who had never heard of Kaufman, or who had liked him when he was performing, loved the film. Everyone else didn't. To put it simply, Jim Carrey turned in the best performance of the year. Keven Spacey is my favorite actor, but Carrey was simply magnificent here. To use a trite expression, he simply becomes Andy Kaufman. This film wasn't really supposed to cover the entire life of Kaufman, and sure, it had minor innaccuracies, but the sheer movie making magic here is phenomenal. All of the supporting players were quite good, especially Paul Giamatti as Bob Zmuda. It's nice to see nearly everyone Kaufman ever worked with making a cameo here. Dave Letterman, Paul Shaffer, the cast of Taxi (minus Tony Danza and Danny DeVito who plays Kaufman's manager in the film), Lorne Michaels, the real Bob Zmuda, Jerry Lawler, Lance Russell, Norm MacDonald even appears as Michael Richards. The ending of this movie was totally beautiful. It summed up everything that Kaufman was. Critics blasted this for not probing into who Andy Kaufman was...but that's just it, Andy Kaufman was whoever you wanted him to be. He was a product of your mind. Asking "Who is the real Andy Kaufman" is just what he wanted.
Man on the Moon 100/100 A+. Forget everything you ever knew about Kaufman, and enjoy it.