Adaptation.

2002 "From the creator of Being John Malkovich, comes the story about the creator of Being John Malkovich."
7.7| 1h55m| R| en| More Info
Released: 06 December 2002 Released
Producted By: Columbia Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/adaptation
Synopsis

Nicolas Cage is Charlie Kaufman, a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the others'.

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Reviews

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
dwolf77 Charlie Kaufman is one of the best screenwriters of all time. In this film, he manages to write a movie about writing a movie, along with writing a movie about a book. He writes so elegantly about the process of screenwriting, and shows the many struggles and frustrations it presents. Every single performance is incredbile. Meryl Streep is fantastic, as is Chris Cooper, and Nicholas Cage gives one of the best perfoamnces I have seen in a very long time. He portrays both Donald and Charlie Kaufman (forgot to mention that Charlie Kaufman wrote himself as the main character of the film because it is about Charlie Kaufman trying to write a film and running into writer's block), and gives an incredbily nuanced and subtle performance, ensuring you can tell the identical twin brothers (Donald Kaufman being ficitious), apart. The film's ending goes against all of Charlie Kaufman's beliefs about what good screenwriting is, and that's the point. The end of the film includes a car chase, sex, guns, and pointless action, all the clichés Charlie Kaufman despises, yet he did this on purpose, more as a satirical statement on Hollywood than a serious ending. The ending also shows that maybe Charlie Kaufman's desire to be an intellectual and thought-provoking writer can only work for two thirds of a film when adapting a book like The Orchid Thief, but can't necessarily create a third act, because there isn't really a story to tell. Adaptaion is one of the most original, hilarous, and thought-provoking films I have ever seen. It's a must watch.
merelyaninnuendo AdaptationThe eerie perspective, bold plotline and a potential premise are the high points of this feature which unfortunately is supervised without any care and hence fades off into just a mere blurred out idea in this overlong feature. Spike Jonze seems a bit distracted from the main track and hence leads it into a boring ride that may have an interesting climax but the journey is certainly not worth it. The performance objective is completely satisfactory in here for Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep both are putting all their chips in and delivers what is essential. Adaptation might be something plausible on terms of art and craft but when it comes to blend all it in and offer intriguing and gripping tale along with entertainment to the audience, it fails on all levels.
nzswanny Adaptation's plot revolves around a script-writer, Charlie Kaufman, and his brother, Donald Kaufman, and how Charlie Kaufman attempts to bring a non-fiction book about flowers called THE ORCHID THIEF into a film script to be adapted into a movie, which serves the purpose of the title of the film. Stress comes with Charlie's process of creating the script and meanwhile Donald Kaufman achieves success with his script, The 3, stirring up disgusted envy for the character Charlie Kaufman and adding to his continuous stress. Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman are both played by Nicholas Cage and each have funny, unique and likable personalities with Donald Kaufman being the naive "stupid brother" comic relief and Charlie Kaufman being the intelligent, experienced serious man. They both contain great chemistry on the screen considering the fact that it's played by one person only and revolve importantly in the storyline of the film while also being entertaining in their roles, and it's a pure joy to watch the two characters interact and react to the situations in the movie. Adaptation is an excellent film however mainly because it serves the purpose of feeling like a dream by feeling strangely surreal and perfectly normal at the same time, but it also raises a lot of thought-provoking questions about the topic it is on: movie scripts. Adaptation incredibly breaks the normal structure of a movie by rearranging, replacing and even removing, and sets out to do feats that no other movie would dare to do and you may find yourself wondering if the normal film structure is as good as everyone says. The film remains in a strange taste, uses voice-over narration to explain the characters and uses no ordinary structure, yet we are fascinated and entranced by the magically dream-like atmosphere of the captivating film but also being self- aware of it's actions by expressing it in an intentionally destroyed manner. When you watch this movie, I think you'll get feelings that you never thought were there.
guedesnino The kaleidoscope of metalanguage presented in the film, are presented and used with mastery, either at the beginning of "Adaptation" which is linked to the term "Being John Malkovich", both directed by the distinguished Spike Jonze. Still on metalanguage, which is about an adaptation of a book to a cinematographic script, which is created simultaneously with the film itself, ie a film about itself, as a joyfully self-referential exercise of self-deconstruction. But it is also, more profoundly, a film about its own non-existence - a narrative that confronts both the impossibility and the desperate need to tell stories provokes our expectations of coherence, plausibility and fidelity to the reality lived.There are variety of games presented in the film are dominated by the restlessness of knowing what is real what imaginary, what in fact thinks Charlie Kaufman, movie roter and what in fact thinks or thought Susan Orlean, when writing the book "The Orchid Thief "that inspired the film. What script rules are actually followed, ignored, and subverted? And that in the film are presented and worked through the figure of the writing twins Charlie Kaufman / Donald Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) and scriptwriter Robert McKee (Brian Cox).So well adapted to this story are the actors, who in addition to acting are guides who invite us and lead us to organize the fragmentary data of the film. If in the figure of the twins writers we have two sides of the same man, and that in "Adaptation" is referenced like the opposites of the same figure of a policeman and a bandit, where both are complementary. If the script uses these two men to present the diversity of the same man, we have in Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) the perfect adaptation of the divergences that fit in a single person, of how human and fragile and volatile and how the process Of adaptation of a person is not necessarily followed by completely philosophical or psychological questions, are in the measure, impulses of an immediate action. The character Susan surprises with her abrupt change in the end and unpredictability of her attitudes, though consistent, without script or construction failures.The use of the pace in "Adaptation" is undoubtedly an important and necessary point to tell this story, Jonze with his experience in clips and series for MTV, was able to absorb the freshness of a stormy pace that assists in the complexity of moments lived by Charlie and Susan or in moments of lull and mockery of Donald's life as well as in the great final Match Point, a frenetic, accelerated jab of actions and images, but which unfortunately comes out too much, unnecessary, in trying to present solutions that lead to an outcome.At first, Charlie's overly self-conscious and pseudo-intellectual crises are fun as we recognize the same tendencies in ourselves. So we also feel his yearning when he is so touched by a book that it looks like it could be the catalyst to kick him out of his narcissistic lifestyle. That is, until Kaufman reveals his great epiphany - that even after enlightenment, life is still cheap and dirty. What is not true or absolute lie, but turn into two hours of a film, where director and screenwriter apparently dialogues with each other and the public is the passive stance to accompany their discussions.