A spectacular piece of art

Rating: 8/10 (17 March 2011)

Jim Carrey manages to pull off a tremendously difficult role with this film. How to honestly portray someone who was not a very good person. Sure, it's less difficult to a Nazi psychopath or some other sicko, but how do you let the audience in on the fact that the person they thought they knew wasn't who they thought.
So it takes another misunderstood genius to adequately describe him. Andy Kaufman was an artist, but a jerk, a lot of people knew this, but not the vast majority of his fans. Now we know. His goal in life was to annoy people and he was very talented at it. He could also sometimes do comedy, but mostly he spent his time trying to figure out how to annoy the most people he could. He went after pro wrestling fans because he perceived them as being easily deceived and annoyed. He couldn't stand his day job, so he tried to destroy it.
It must have been insanely difficult to portray Andy. To be able to bring a mass audience into his mind, to not sugar coat anything and to make the audience understand someone in a completely new light is film making art at its highest level.
That doesn't mean that this was a particularly enjoyable film to watch. Much like a lot of expressive art, it's not supposed to just be a pretty thing to enjoy. Anyone could represent an uncomplicated concept well enough for thoughtful people to understand. Representing a complex subject well enough for average people to understand takes great skill.
There were a few minor annoyances about the film and I can't say that there was much to laugh about, but Jim's acting makes this a solid 8/10 in my opinion.