ADAPTATION.

8/10

USA 2002 : Spike Jonze : 114mins

The new film from the team behind Being John Malkovich is ‘Adaptation.’ – the full stop is, pedantically, part of the correct title. Perhaps ‘Affectation’ might have been closer to the mark: we’re venturing deep into smart-arse territory this time, with scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman as our guide. And it turns out to be a journey far into the nether regions of Kaufman’s own backside as Adaptation.’s “hero” is none other than Kaufman himself – played by Nicolas Cage, who also does double-duty as Charlie’s (fictional) twin brother Donald.

The movie’s Kaufman twins are both screenwriters – Charlie a social misfit, unexpectedly red hot on the back of the Oscar-nominated Malkovich, Donald a happy-go-lucky newcomer who shares little of his brother’s scorching originality and churns out formulaic trash in accordance to the tried-and-tested box-office formula. His success further depresses Charlie, who is struggling to adapt Susan Orlean’s (real-life) best-seller The Orchid Thief – we see episodes from the book acted out by Meryl Streep (as Orlean) and Chris Cooper (as the eponymous thief John Laroche), which become increasingly bizarre as Donald starts ‘helping out’ his “blocked” brother…

Adaptation., though it tries mighty hard, never quite establishes it own hysterical, twisted-logic universe to rival that of Malkovich (most of the best gags tellingly feature Malkovich personnel). The originality level isn’t quite the same, and the central gimmick – a movie that writes itself as we watch – was pulled off more wittily in 1994’s postmodern Freddy Krueger sequel, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. But there’s no shortage of intriguing ideas and plenty of terrific moments along the way courtesy of Jonze, Kaufman, and their uniformly up-for-it cast.

by Neil Young

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