Recreation of an act, not a biopic

Rating: 6/10 (20 June 2001)

This is a strange kind of biopic, hardly looking at all at Kaufman's life offstage and away from the cameras; while Carrey puts in an adequate performance as the crazy non-comedian, and we learn lots about the kind of things Kaufman thought were funny (though, as Danny DeVito's character frequently points out, only to him, not to his audience), the filmmakers scarcely bother looking into the man behind the loopy stageshows. After a few seconds of one moment of his early childhood, we skip straight to adult Kaufman, already quite weird and with (suggested) compulsive-obsessive disorders aplenty, his odd, not-that-funny act already fairly developed. Though the storytelling is often touching, the performances fine and the ending quite poignant, it is quite a superficial story, with little to interest anyone familiar with Kaufman's antics and wanting to know more about his ideas and motivations. For those (like me) who only know him from vague childhood memories of repeats of Taxi!, it does stir a little interest, only to disappoint by not going deeper. Very average.