On M List of Movie Reviews
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Man on the Moon (1999)
Rate:
10
Viewed:
1/26
1/26:
How did the Academy Awards overlook Jim Carrey for Best Actor?
He gave the greatest performance ever in Man on the Moon and thus should've won it. Strangely,
all of his movies, starting with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,
were megahits, grossing hundreds of millions of dollars, but this one was actually a box-office failure.
At first, I didn't think Jim Carrey could be Andy Kaufman because it's almost impossible to capture the real
person if video evidence exists, but he floored me not long, especially after doing an
impersonation of Tony Clifton. It's safe to say that he out-Andy'ed Andy Kaufman and was even funnier. Sure, a
lot of liberties have been taken compared to how the events really happened.
A cool aspect of the film is seeing lots and lots of all-stars who did have a relationship with
Andy Kaufman in one way or another. By far the biggest surprise is the reunion of the cast from
Taxi, but where's Tony Danza?!? He said that he had to do a Broadway show and couldn't get out of it.
Bullshit...he probably didn't like working with Andy Kaufman. Carol Kane later confessed she was the only
one from the TV sitcom to attend his funeral.
How about the weirdness of Danny DeVito playing Andy Kaufman's agent? I'm truthfully okay with this because it
was either a cameo appearance or a much bigger role. Therefore, he made the movie better. Most of the time,
I'm impressed with the show's high level of spontaneity, which is constantly often throughout, and it
reminds me of Miloš Forman's directorial brilliance in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and
Amadeus.
There are several things shown in the film that may seem bizarre, but that's what happened. Because Andy
Kaufman had a reputation of putting on a show, no matter how bad or threatening it seemed, and would fool
everybody at the end. Therefore, when it came to announcing his lung cancer diagnosis (by the way, I thought
he was a lifelong smoker), everybody naturally assumed it was another elaborate joke of his.
It's also true that Andy Kaufman went to the Philippines to have psychic surgery which presented "the illusion
of performing surgery with their bare hands and use sleight of hand, fake blood, and animal parts to convince
the patient that diseased lesions have been removed and that the incision has spontaneously healed." After
he died, everybody was expecting him to reappear somewhere and to admit the whole death drama was totally
faked. That's how weird Andy Kaufman was in real life may have been autistic. By the way, remember
the fight during an episode of Friday? That was Michael Richards, not Norm MacDonald.
All in all, forget Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,
The Mask, Dumb and Dumber,
or Liar Liar...Man on the Moon is el numero uno of Jim
Carrey's career.