Now I understand the R.E.M. song - but this gain is not enough...

Rating: 4/10 (22 February 2000)

This film has one big problem: its subject... Andy Kaufman isn't interesting enough that you feel like spending an evening with him, not even in cinema. It would be good for a semi-documentary (IF - I want to see the real Kaufman, too!), but Forman decided to bring his life onto a big picture - with all the ingrediences you need to reach the masses, especially the pathetic stuff. Infortunately it doesn't work here. The film can't tell me where is the special significance and the importance of Kaufman. He provoked the TV-public with his artistic and humoristic extravaganzas, Forman says, and he is right, but he did it in an era, in which the public was already accustomed to nonsense in TV programs. In fact, Kaufman didn`t hurt existencial taboos of society, but just the feelings of some of its members. There was a documentary about the Sex Pistols on the Berlin Film Festival, where the anachronisms in society (monarchy and british hypocrisy vs. punk phenomenon) is shown much clearer. If you mind the circumstances (wrong subject, wrong type of film), Forman even made the best out of it...