Man on the Moon Poster

Man on the Moon (1999)

Biography | Drama 
Rayting:   7.4/10 124.7K votes
Country: UK | Germany
Language: English
Release date: 25 May 2000

The life and career of legendary comedian

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clawpack 10 December 2004

For all the attention he got, Andy Kaufman didn't leave much of a comic legacy. Mostly just his part on Taxi, where his Latka character could be amusing in small doses. So why make a movie about a secondary sitcom actor? Unfortunately, you'll still be asking that question when the movie is over.

What Kaufman was famous for is stunts involving feigned anger or outright verbal abuse that were designed to entertain only himself. People who watched him hoping to see something funny often just saw shouting and threats. He was called a comedian but he preferred being unfunny.

Man on the Moon carefully recreates these episodes. Makeup artists make Jim Carrey look exactly like Kaufman, and Carrey meticulously reenacts all of Kaufman's mannerisms. The producers even cast many of Kaufman's actual accomplices, like wrestler Jerry Lawler. The problem is, when you carefully, painstakingly recreate an unfunny event, you get a careful, painstaking unfunny event. This isn't a failed movie in the sense it doesn't achieve its goal; it's a failed movie in the sense that the goal was never worth achieving.

Xophianic 2 February 2000

Fmovies: I watched this movie already knowing quite a bit about Andy Kaufman and the things that he has done in the past. I was hoping to learn more about him after watching this movie. Unfortunately, I knew more about Andy Kaufman than this movie told me. As a biography, this movie wasn't so great. It didn't go into much about Andy's childhood or what he was like outside of work. Rather, it showed most of the skits and performances that Andy has done throughout his life, most of which you could learn about on MTV specials.

The acting was well done, especially by the star Jim Carrey. Carrey played Andy Kaufman. This was by far the best acting job I have ever seen Jim Carrey perform. One could argue he did a better job at Andy Kaufman's skits than Andy Kaufman himself did.

The plot and storyline, if not looking from a biography point of view, was very interesting. The best thing, in my opinion about the movie is learning more about how Andy Kaufman met his girlfriend, the scenes from Taxi and his wrestling career. I didn't care much for Tony Clifton but, as the movie states, he is a different person from Andy Kaufman all together.

I'd say this movie is worth a rent, don't go to theaters to see it. Jim Carrey deserves an Academy Award for his performance.

tdunlevy 16 November 1999

Man on the Moon is one of the most heart-felt endeavors I've ever seen on film. With each frame, you can feel how much the project means personally to all involved, especially to star Jim Carrey and producer Bob Zmuda. Although personal adoration for the subject of one's movie does not always translate into a film that audience members will identify with, Man on the Moon succeeds brilliantly. Between Milos Forman's unique directing style, the actors' performances, and Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's writing, the film is able to simultaneously make you a member in one of Andy Kaufman's audiences, experiencing both joy and frustration at his antics, and a close friend who sees, or thinks they see, the Andy Kaufman behind the masks. Just as Karaszewski and Alexander did with the Ed Wood or Larry Flint biopicks, they challenge our concept of what it means to be successful by giving dignity to to the seeming misfits of our society. However, a biopick like Man on the Moon succeeds or fails mainly on the grounds of the lead performance. Jim Carrey proved his dramatic talent last year with a performance in The Truman Show that should have translated into an Oscar, and this year he again gives what will likely be the best performance of the year. Carrey approaches the role of Kaufman with a level of professionalism and enthusiasm far greater than that displayed by many of today's acclaimed actors. Carrey adopts Kaufman's mannerisms flawlessly and becomes Kaufman so convincingly that you forget Carrey is acting. The film's other stars, in particular Paul Giamatti, Courtney Love, and Danny DeVito, all turn in excellent performances as well.

Man on the Moon is both inspiring and thought provoking - a must see.

Buddy-51 10 June 2000

Man on the Moon fmovies. Your fondness for `Man on the Moon' may well be predicated on your feelings for Andy Kaufman, both as comic performer and offstage human being. And, as this film suggests, there was not, ultimately, a very wide gap between the two. Indeed, the point of the film seems to be that, with Kaufman, the many characters he showed to us on stage and T.V. pretty much reflected the man who existed in real life.

This may be both the strength and the weakness of the movie itself. Kaufman's purported genius has always eluded me. Ostensibly, it lay, I imagine, in his metaphorically giving the finger to his audience while entertaining them at the same time. That audience, ultimately discovering that it was the butt of the joke, then was able to go a step further and become a willing part of the act, allowing them all to feel superior to the uninitiated masses still deluded enough to be on the outside looking in. Kaufman's act became, then, a kind of exclusive comic club, a collective act of defiance against the social norms of theatrical convention and good taste. Thus, we see him in the film reading the entire novel `The Great Gatsby' verbatim to a stunned and ultimately hostile college audience; we see him wrestling women while spouting inflammatory chauvinistic rhetoric and deliberately muffing his lines on live national television in a brilliant blurring of the line between reality and theatricality. The problem, however, is that iconoclasm has never been a source of humor in itself, and much of Kaufman's act and persona came across as heavy-handed, smug and self-conscious, particularly in his grating Lithuanian `Taxi' character. In short, Kaufman always seemed too full of himself and so dazzled by his own cleverness and cuteness to ever be truly funny. It was like he was always pointing his thumbs back at himself saying, `Look how funny I am.' Such unctiousness inspires us not to laugh.

The film itself is an uneven study of the man. The first half is particularly shaky. After a clever 5-minute view of Kaufman as a performance-obsessed child, we move to his young adulthood where we see him bombing in a local nightclub with an act so aggressively unfunny that we cannot even imagine that it could possibly be real. Then, virtually in the blink of an eye, he is discovered by his future manager, again, in a scene of staggering incredibility, in which Kaufman somehow manages to reduce his audience to helpless laughter with material that couldn't possibly evoke even titters let alone room-shaking guffaws. Before we know it, Kaufman has somehow landed a hosting job on `Saturday Night Live' (yet another bad performance) and has become so much in demand that he not only secures a role in a new sitcom, `Taxi,' but is allowed to make all sorts of demands from the producers in exchange for his services. The chronicle of his meteoric rise to fame simply lacks the detail necessary to make it credible.

The movie finds surer footing as it moves ahead in time. If anything, the gross lack of humor of many of his performances recreated for the film simply underlines the overrated comic gifts of Kaufman himself. Although the writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karasczewski, and director, Milos Forman, convey an obvious attitude of affection towards Kaufman, they do not shy away from portraying the self-centered petulance that governed many of his actions both in his professional and personal life. The most poignant moments come when he discovers he has lung cancer, yet cannot convin

mjlavoie 22 December 1999

I saw a special sneak preview of "Man on the Moon" last week in Boston. Quite simply, the film is magnificent, and truly provides the audience with a glimpse into the genius of Andy Kaufman. There are moments of true hilarity, and moments that will break your heart.

Of course, this film would be nothing without the inspired performance by Jim Carrey. Within the first moments of the film, you completely forget that it is Jim Carrey on screen. Rarely have I seen an actor truly transform into the persona that he is portraying. Jim Carrey was Andy Kaufman.

At the very least, Mr. Carrey is deserving of every honor that is given in acting. No other performance this year comes even close to this. Without question, this is a film for the ages, and gives everyone a look into the mind of a genius.

williamdejager 27 December 2005

Jim Carrey delivers on of the greatest acting achievements of the nineties in this stunning biopic about the legendary comedian Andy Kaufman (the man on the moon, according to REM). For me as a European citizen, Andy Kaufman is a complete mystery. I've never seen any of his performances in Saturday Night Live nor have I ever seen any of his live shows. After seeing the movie five times, I as a Dutch not-knowing citizen who had never heard of Kaufman before, can make an image of the man and his brilliance. This is all thanks to Milos Forman and a stunning Jim Carrey, who really becomes Andy Kaufman. According to me, this movie is where Jim Carrey proves that he is just more than a funny guy, and after seeing him in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Carrey has really proved that he is in fact a character actor.

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