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| Movies,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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I have issues with biopics. They’re either over-cooked second rate TV productions, the kind with ‘RAGE: the Steve Guttenberg story’ style titles – in these you’ll be hard pressed to see any kind of resemblance between the subject and the actor. Then there’s your more expensive Hollywood counterparts, much classier affairs but still suffering from the urge to sensationalise and fabricate in order to keep the attention. The writers are always trying to shoe-horn someone’s whole life into a presentable two hour Oscar worthy tale with dramatic highs and lows, emotional resolution, and other contrivances that inevitably detract from the actual life of the subject.
There’s moments in ‘Man on the Moon’, Milos Forman’s take on the life of Andy Forman, when you think that someone in the script department is not just over-exaggerating events, but is clearly typing under the influence of Jimmy Hill’s beard. Kaufman is known only over here as Lakita Graves in the TV show ‘Taxi’, but in the States courted controversy through a series of highly unconventional TV and stage appearances. Clearly years ahead of his time, Kaufman’s bizarre is-this-for-real public appearances made tough viewing. Male/female wrestling obsessions, the bullish offensive Vegas crooner Tony, an astounding Christmas stage special, a not-so-successful TV special with added vertical hold slippage – it’s all here, and it’s amazing stuff.
While concentrating on these key moments, the film skims over his personal life fairly lightly. His wife, manager and script writing partner are ever-present and sympathetically sketched, but rarely focused on in any detail. No problem however, because there’s more than enough of Kaufman’s life to go round, and besides, I’ve never been much of a fan of the sentimental stuff anyway.
Carrey-haters (that’s most folks these days) shouldn’t be put off by his main role here, while you could hardly say he puts in a restrained performance, he’s very locked in on Kaufman’s character here, so there’s less of the irritating brand ‘zaniness’ on display.
In a nutshell, it would be fairly impossible to make a dull film of Andy Kaufman’s life. Add to this that fact that Milos Forman has made more film biogs that you’ve had hot dinners and you have an exceptional film.
UK rating:
15
US rating:
PG
Milos Forman1999 USA
Jim Carey, Danny DeVito, Courtney Love
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