trip to another planet

Rating: 9/10 (22 May 2001)

Based on a real story, the film brings us into a mysterious world of Andy Kaufman, who appeared to be one of the most enigmatic comedians of our time. Andy derides the audience, makes them laugh or amazed, whips up emotions; i.e. he entertains them. But this entertainment is so uncommon that you start thinking whether it is entertainment or just nonsense, a wasting of time. And together with Andy we are involved in exploring the categories of real and unreal. Although Andy was mixing reality with imagination, the film makes us feel that Andy, by his art, has still made distinguishable the borderline between good and evil. The film, despite its immense strangeness, radiates warmth.
Jim Carrey as Andy is brilliant: you can't imagine a better performance of an actor in this role. Excellent are Paul Giamatti, Denny DeVito and Courtney Love. A Carnegie Hall, the Philippine trip, and the funeral scenes are staged and shot masterly. The music is wonderful.
In each Milos Forman film, behind what you watch, on a backstage, there is always a problem, idea or opinion that provokes you to think. Forman's latest film at first glance seems to be simple: it portrays only a showbiz part of Andy Kaufman's life, almost no off-scene life of the comedian is shown as well as the reasons for his so eccentric behavior.
But Andy's life, according to the film, was indivisible from his art: his art was his life and vice versa, mostly feeding on irrationality and imagination. Imagination has no boundaries, all the same as, say, the universe. It forms a whole, the film and its backstage, something without boundaries, something amorphous. Therefore, you don't have to look for something specific or concrete behind the film: there is again the same irrationality and imagination there. All you have to do is to watch and enjoy this multilayer, elevated and refined philosophical film (which, by the way, is not a comedy) on our today's absurd life where the love and kindness are to be praised. And these are the main categories that the movie instigates us to think about.