Not a Kaufman Bio

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2002)

This movie will tell the viewer absolutely nothing about Andy Kaufman; all it does is rehash the external accounts of his premeditated self-destruction during the late 70's and 80's. Carrey's performance is wasted in a useless script by someone who either did as little as possible to research Kaufman's life, or tried to and discovered it was impossible, or more than likely found his real life too boring to write a script about, and so we have this.
The song, Man on the Moon, will tell you more about Andy Kaufman in three minutes than this film will. He was a performer who seemed fascinated by actors' self-destructive tendencies and seemed to want to recreate them, or just had such anger toward his audience (a common trait in actors) that he wanted to alienate them more and more in his acts. We will never know, but the big question is, why would we care?
This movie gave me absolutely no insight into Kaufman's life, and whoever gave it glowing reviews read into it whatever they wanted to see.
Kaufman would either have hated this movie or loved it. My suspicion is that he would have loved it. He was a man who wanted people to know as little about him as possible, and this movie gives the audience exactly that.
Two stars. Carrey gave a great performance, but I'm disappointed in that he had the power to demand and wait for a much better (i.e., real) script, and didn't use it. It's a shame.
"Thank you vedy much"