December 23, 1999
Web posted at: 11:38 a.m. EST (1638 GMT)

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- If you were ever happily perplexed by the late, great comedian Andy Kaufman, you'll need to look much farther than Milos Forman's surprisingly slapdash "Man on the Moon" to find out what made him tick.

There's a lot of carrying on right now about star Jim Carrey "channeling" Kaufman in his performance, and Carrey certainly does an accurate impersonation, one that might net him an Oscar nomination.

But the lazy script, by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, is an embarrassment. It's almost thoroughly devoid of psychological insight into its complex subject, and lacks even a tinge of character development. That is, until Kaufman is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Immense tragedy will develop anybody's character, for better or worse.

The first hour is almost shameful. You get a simple string of crackpot postures from Kaufman without even a passing attempt to understand why he bothered to adopt them. There's not even a stab at linking his performances as a series of twisted, interconnected events. Kaufman was a childlike performer if ever there was one, but his entire upbringing is dealt with in 90 seconds.

This strongly suggests that Alexander and Karaszewski don't have a clue. Yeah, Andy liked to put on little shows in his bedroom when he was kid. But so did millions of other people who didn't go on to wreak revolutionary havoc on national television.

A recent magazine article, in which the screenwriters noted that the key to developing the script was understanding that there was no "real" Andy at all, didn't bode well for the movie's prospects. If you have to do extensive research to grasp that Kaufman was his own willfully unorthodox creation, onstage and off, you're not likely to clear anything up when telling his story. Anything that's in the movie could easily have been gleaned by watching Kaufman on TV.

Forman and his screenwriters seem to believe that reaction shots of bemused audience members is the same thing as digging into Kaufman's psyche. The movie as a whole plays like a large group of people shrugging their shoulders and saying, "You got me."

Kaufman was off on another planet or the moon, no doubt about it. But if you can't even remotely break his code of supposed insanity you shouldn't make a film about him. The most time-consuming part of writing a movie review is boiling a two-hour plot down to a few paragraphs of key thematic and narrative elements. That's no problem at all with "Man on the Moon." There aren't any key elements, outside Carrey's intense focus.

Most of the characters simply hang out in Kaufman's orbit while he continues to commit career suicide by distancing himself from the general public's definition of "entertainment." The only new piece of information is that wrestler Jerry Lawler (who plays himself) helped orchestrate his crowd-baiting confrontations with Kaufman from the get-go, including the notorious face-slapping incident on the David Letterman show.

That Andy feels those confrontations were "a shining moment in behavioral science" should have been explored at length, probably from the first reel onward. It certainly suggests that he was more than just a head case. Instead, the remark appears out of nowhere after about 90 minutes, then everyone returns to kvetching about their unknowable friend.

The cast is game enough, although not even remotely tested. Danny DeVito plays Kaufman's long-suffering agent, George Shapiro. This means that he doesn't get to appear with the re-grouped cast members from "Taxi" during an anemic little montage of Kaufman's greatest hits from the show.

Judd Hirsch, Marilu Henner, Christopher Lloyd and Jeff Conaway all drop from the radar screen after a quick bout with Kaufman's alter ego, an offensive lounge singer named Tony Clifton. No one from the show even exchanges hellos with Andy (or with Clifton, for that matter), which should give you some idea of how sloppy this thing is.

There's exactly one devastating moment: Andy breaks into morbid laughter after realizing that the faith healer he's hoping will cure his cancer is playing Kaufman-like mind games with his patients. Outside that, the movie suffers from an acute fear of insight.

	MORE REVIEWS
'Sunshine' 'Boys and Girls': Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk, Kiss Titan A.E. Gone in 60 Seconds Passion of Mind Big Momma Croupier Mission: Impossible 2 Small Time Crooks East Is East Dinosaur Center Stage Battlefield Earth The Big Kahuna Virgin Suicides Gladiator Me Myself I Time Code Where the Heart Is 'Frequency' 28 Days U-571 Joe Gould's Secret American Psycho Keeping the Faith Here on Earth Rules of Engagement Return to Me Romeo Must Die The Road to El Dorado The Ninth Gate Mifune Waking the Dead Beyond the Mat Erin Brockovich Drowning Mona Agnes Browne Mission to Mars Wonder Boys The Next Best Thing The Cup The Whole Nine Yards Reindeer Games Boiler Room Titus Hanging Up Simpatico A Map of the World The Beach Gun Shy Eye of Beholder Isn't She Great

Paul Giamatti plays Kaufman's writing partner, Bob Zmuda. Courtney Love plays Kaufman's fiancée, Lynne Margulies. Both actors, who have done fine work in the past, have nothing to play. They simply appear as the people in Kaufman's life. The only person who could fully appreciate the perverse inadequacy of "Man on the Moon" is Kaufman himself; you leave the theater wondering what the hell you just saw. Or why you bothered to sit through it.

"Man on the Moon" is the most disappointing film of 1999. Carrey is quite good, if not a revelation. Now watch lots of people pretend it's brilliant because it's not the same old thing. Rated R for bad language and brief nudity. 118 minutes.