Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129974 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-10-31
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 206 minutes

Amazon.com
"There is no real you," jokes Lynn Margulies (Courtney Love) to her boyfriend, Andy Kaufman (Jim Carrey), as he grows more contemplative during a battle with cancer. "I forgot," he says, playing along, though the question of Kaufman's reality is always at issue in Milos Forman's underappreciated Man on the Moon.

The story of Kaufman's quick rise to fame through early appearances on Saturday Night Live and the conceptual stunts that made his club and concert appearances an instant legend in the irony-fueled 1970s and early '80s, Man on the Moon never makes the mistake of artificially delineating Comic Andy from Private Andy. True, we get to see something of his private interest in meditation and some of the flakier extremes of alternative medicine, but even these interludes suggest the presence of an ultimate con behind apparent miracles of transformation.

Screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (The People vs. Larry Flynt) allege that transformation was Kaufman's purpose--more than a shtick but less than a destiny. As we see him constantly up the ante on the credibility of his performance personae (the obnoxious nightclub comic Tony Clifton; the insulting, misogynistic professional wrestler), Forman makes it harder and harder to detect Kaufman's sleight of hand. But it's there, always there, always the transcendent Andy watching the havoc he creates and the emotions he stirs.

Carrey is magnificent as Kaufman, re-creating uncannily detailed comedy pieces etched in the memory of anyone who remembers the real Andy. But while Carrey's mimicry of Kaufman is flawless and funny, the actor probes much deeper into an enigmatic character who, in life, was often a moving target even for those closest to him. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Jim Carrey, as the surrealist comic Andy Kaufman, who died in 1984, is more volatile than the actual Kaufman-bigger, more threatening, more thoroughly lost in madness. He captures Kaufman's infantile grandiosity, the taunting ironic schmuckiness that dared anyone to take offense. Unfortunately, the moviemakers' intention is not to illuminate Kaufman but to enshrine him as a pure performer and beautiful nut case. This Kaufman is exactly the same offstage and on. He's all surface and tricks, all wild-monkey craziness, and he shatters every reality but his own. We are too intimidated to ask such obvious questions as, Is he calculating and shrewd or is he just unconscious-a semi-psychotic set loose in the media? Our desire to understand him is recast as some sort of existential weakness; the movie turns into an exercise in one-upmanship. With Paul Giamatti, Danny DeVito, and Courtney Love. Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A joke on us?
My favorite Kaufman routine is one in which he is in a club and he is being heckled by a guy. The guys says "You suck, Kaufman" and Kaufman gives some line back to him. Kaufman takes care of the heckler, classic comedian style. And then the heckler days "yOU'RE NOT FUNNY, kAUFMAN. tHE TRUTH IS, YOU PAID ME TO DO THIS...Am I right? Am I right Kaufman, didn't you pay me...to heckle you? So you would look good, huh?" And this bit goes on for an uncomfortable amount of time. Kaufman seemed to be about layers of uncomfortability...about making the audience feel something other than laughs..

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski are fun screenwriters, (though I am not sure they are still working) having produced script for Larry Flynt and Ed Wood....they are not always concerned with tradition, and find great hools in telling the story. They then seem like the perfect choice for writing the story of Andy Kaufman, the most non traditional of performers...and certainly the first five minutes of the film does not dissapoint...Kaufman(Jim Carrey) stands in a movie screen, tells everybody it is his movie and the weirdness ensues.

Ok.

Well, then the next two hours never captures this same kind of "what is real?" feeling. I mean, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed this movie, and Carrey does an amazing job of recreating Kaufman onstage...but I thought there were a few problems...one is that no one knew Kaufman that well, and therefore it is almost impossible to create a bio pic for someone you can't actually identify with. Therefore we are saddled with forties bio cliches" I Want to Be The greatest of all times" and the fantastic"I want To Play Carnegie Hall", and the obligatory "guy finds cyst on his neck".

Second of All, Kaufman just comes off like a jerk half the time.

Third of All, when the film ends, we are no further along about Kaufman than When the film started.

But as I think about it, here an hour and a half after seeing the movie, I wonder if the wanting more, the frustration, the unanswered questions is not the ultimate Kaufman prank. And the pranks are the major gist of the film. Much of the film is about an audience not knowing how to take it all...and they are brilliant pranks...just when you think you have it figured out, Kaufman's illusionary reality takes over.

So have we been had? Is this film pretending to be a meaningful bio, and is the ultimate prank? Did we watch
this just to be part of a giant illusion, to be caught up in the routines, to cringe at the innapropriate gags, to wonder why all the members of Taxi are playing themselves twenty years later and DiVito is playing someone else?, and then walk away feeling we have seen a genius or a madman or both...
and feel like we have been involved in some giant Kaufmanesque experience...

All in all, I think this is a worthwhile experience...

or maybe Kaufman is alive, and paid me to write this.

Jim Carrey deserved an Oscar and didn't even get nominated!
First of all, I would like to say that this is a great movie -- you'll find yourself totally immersed into the universe of Andy Kaufman during this movie (at least I was). Before I saw this movie, I had never seen anything by Andy Kaufman (although I tried to change that fact prior to seeing the movie, but since I live in Denmark, it's hard getting any of his stuff) -- right after seeing it, I went straight home and ordered some of his work on DVD.

Also, anyone who has seen this movie must agree with me, in that Jim Carrey was at least ripped for an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, if not the Oscar statue itself. I can only imagine that it is very rare when an actor is nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards, wins the Golden Globe, and doesn't even get nominated for an Oscar? I've lost most of my respect for the Academy.

Don't be fooled by the fact that this movie didn't sell as good as most of the other Jim Carrey movies -- this is definitely his best performance so far (though not as funny as some of his previous blockbusters, this movie is not intended to be a "full-blown" comedy).

The DVD release looks great too. Not only do you get a great movie at a great price, you also get a lot of extras at that price, something which is rare these days when you often pay somewhat extra to get the "collectors edition" or "special edition". I'm a huge R.E.M. fan too, so the inclusion of two R.E.M. music videos ("Man on the Moon" and "The Great Beyond") is simply great!

An amazing biopic; under appreciated... WHY!
How strange is this; a biopic about a groundbreaking and enigmatic comedian's life (Andy Kaufman), starring one of Hollywood's top actors (Jim Carrey), illustrated through an Academy Award winning director (Milos Forman) is considered a bad movie! Why? Because nobody knows or likes Andy Kaufman? Because it was rated R? It's more like under appreciated...

This is an amazing movie in which we see Andy brought back to life through Jim Carrey's performance. In fact, you do not see Carrey anywhere in this film. All the jokes and gags are by Andy, not Jim, ANDY. The rest of the casts' performance supports the movie, such as Paul Giamatti's portrayal as Bob Zmuda and Courtney Love's portrayal as Andy supporting and loving girlfriend, Lynn Marguiles.

It's odd how it did bad at the box office and with some critics, who were writing it off as one of the worst films of 1999. Now that it's on video and DVD, it's getting good reviews! Where was the support during the 2000 Academy Awards (it didn't even get 1 nomination!)? You have to understand and figure out the movie before passing judgement.