Tragically Shallow

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2000)

I really wanted to like this movie a lot. I'm not a huge Jim Carrey fan, but I knew beforehand the level of commitment he made to really becoming Andy Kaufman for this part. Fortunately, his performance does not disappoint. Down to Andy's voice qualities and mannerisms, Jim Carrey really succeeded in in exploring and reflecting each of Andy's strange personalities on Taxi and on the stage.
The problem with this movie is that every scene that takes place off stage is tragically shallow. There is not a drop of depth to this movie or any of its characters. The talent that is wasted in this movie is almost criminal. Courtney Love, who proved to be a great talent in Forman's "People vs. Larry Flynt" hardly has any meaningful screen time or dialogue. Paul Giamatti, one of the great character actors of recent memory is completely wasted in this film, playing a two-dimensional Bob Zmuda with only a single flash of his real acting brilliance (if you haven't seen him before, check out Private Parts or The Negotiator). Danny DeVito tries to escape the shallow script but is largely unsuccessful as well. Its not that these performances are poor, only that they have very little good material to work with.
The "Taxi" scenes were also strange with no real dialogue for any of the cast members, only multiple scenes of them watching Andy's antics with concerned or angry looks on their faces and showing their ages much too much for the scenes to seem real. There was also the conspicuous absence of Tony Danza.
In short, if you want to relive some of Andy's great comic genius, you will enjoy Jim Carrey's portrayal. If you want to see a film that really explores the off screen life of one of the 80's most misunderstood and enigmatic figures, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Milos Forman is capable of a much, much better film than this.