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Adaptation Movie Review

Adaptation is a 2002 meta comedy-drama film directed by Spike Jonze and starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper. It’s a typically annoying Kaufman movie.

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“It’s over. Everything’s over.

I did everything wrong.

I want my life back“

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Kaufman, a screenwriter, struggles to adapt Orlean’s book about Laroche, who clones rare orchids and sells them to collectors. Their lives get intertwined with unpredictable results. Adaptation was written by Charlie Kaufman and it shows – it is overly self-indulgent and pretentious. It’s a movie that screams pure arrogance from its writer and director, which I personally really dislike.

The performances are uniformly great. Chris Cooper won an Oscar for a supporting role here and he was quite strong, but it is Nicolas Cage who impresses in dual twin roles. He managed to execute both of these characters effortlessly, so that the results are two very different people. Meryl Streep is also commendable in a surprisingly comedic and light turn for her, which was refreshing to witness. Among the others, Ron Livingston was the most memorable and funniest cast member.

Adaptation has its funny and interesting sequences, but tonally speaking it’s an utter mess. It never knows whether it wants to be a serious drama or a funny, irreverent comedy. The result is a polarizing picture with not much to offer for those of us who aren’t into strange stories.

The second half is where the movie resorted to a lot of weirdness for the sake of weirdness, which is never a good thing. Odd plot points piled upon ridiculous situations and to me most of it was frustrating to watch and even infuriating at times.

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The editing and pacing are also a mess as is the directing. Spike Jonze has made better movies than this one and the same goes for Charlie Kaufman, who has only recently became interesting to me with his newer efforts being much more appealing than these earlier ones. The movie screams self-indulgence and that was its biggest undoing.

Spike Jonze directed Adaptation and Charlie Kaufman wrote it. The result of this collaboration screams self-indulgence and pretentiousness. The movie features strong performances from its excellent cast, but it is so annoying in its overly strange plot scenarios that were particularly infuriating in its chaotic second half. It’s a disorganized, pointless mess of a film.

My Rating – 2.5