Adaptation  (2002) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Two thumbs way up. Scoop's comments in white.

As I write this, Adaptation is in only in a handful of theaters, but it is already a critical smash, one of the best reviewed films of the year. The initial reaction from the public also appears to be positive, which is somewhat surprising because it is an esoteric film. Scores are high at all the voting sites, and in its trial run, in seven theaters last week, its daily box office average went as high as a phenomenal $16,000 per screen on Saturday.

In one of the strangest, most introspective films ever brought to mainstream audiences, Donald Kaufman, a fictional character in the film, is given a writing credit. How can that be? You see, it is a film about a writer named Charles Kaufman trying to turn a precious book by a New Yorker scribe into a movie. The task is impossible. His twin brother, Donald, is also a screenwriter who works on mindless projects like teen slasher films. He ends up taking over the project, although that fact is not spoon-fed to the audience. Here's the twist. The film they are working on is the very film we are watching.

Adaptation itself is written by Charles Kaufman. (Brother Donald is fictional). It is his attempt to create a film from a static, precious, reflective, offbeat, philosophical book written by a New Yorker journalist. This film is about his struggle to create this film.

Are you still confused? Well, the first half of this film reflects the way Charles Kaufman would have approached the project, as an arty meditation on life and beauty. The second half of the film represents the way Donald Kaufman would have re-written it as an exciting genre film, according to the McKee principles of screenwriting. The first half, therefore, is static, full of apothegmatic insights and reflections about human nature. It is simply an offbeat New Yorker piece about a colorful man who steals orchids from state land, and the reporter who covers the case. In the second half, all the characters are transformed into the usual suspects seen in thrillers. It turns out that the sophisticated New Yorker staffer is having an affair with the toothless Orchid Thief, and that they are building a drug empire from ingredients distilled from orchids. There are gunfights, murders, chases, last minute deus ex machina rescues, and people eaten by alligators. Well, to be more accurate, the alligator is the deus ex machina. More of a deus ex everglades.

Art copies parody. Some months ago, I reviewed Clint Eastwood's version of Bridges of Madison County, imagining that the film had really turned out the way people feared it would when Eastwood originally announced the project: squinty-eyed showdowns in dusty saloons, and a gunfight in which Meryl Streep drew a hidden gun from her support hose and did shoulder rolls to get off a few shots at Lee Van Cleef. The original book, of course, was a classic chick-book about true love and dreams which are lost but not forgotten. Many people thought Dirty Harry was the wrong choice to be the director, but the Dirtmeister actually did a pretty damned good job.

Well, guess what? Adaptation took "The Orchid Thief", an book which was as precious as "Bridges of Madison County" and far quirkier and more erudite, and actually did all the things I imagined in that facetious review. Meryl Streep does lurid sex scenes in a mobile home, poses topless for a porno web site, snorts drugs, growls like a Tarantino character, and crawls through the swamps packin' heat. At least she does that in the second half - the "Donald" portion of the screenplay. In the first half, the "Charles" half, she is her usual sad-eyed, refined, well-mannered, Upper East Side self.

I have never been a fan of Nic Cage, but he is excellent in this movie, using his whiny voice and hang-dog look to great advantage as both of the author's alter egos. Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep are, as always, tremendous. Like Cage, they also played two roles each, although the credits don't really define it as two separate roles. The audience must figure out that their personalities in the "Donald" half of the script are completely different from the characters they had played up until that point.

Kaufman is the screenwriter of such offbeat fare as Human Nature and Being John Malkovich. Director Spike Jonze also worked with Kaufman on Being John Malkovich.

Crazy, imaginative stuff. Like those other two Kaufman movies, it is intelligent almost to a fault, darkly humorous, and just plain odd.

Oh, yeah ... and amazingly entertaining.