Near the end of Man On the Moon Andy Kaufman says to his agent and friend George Shapiro, "I have a great idea for a show.  It will be on Saturday morning and it will be for the kids."  It is an interesting moment in that it makes us understand immediately that this is what Andy Kaufmann should have been doing all along, entertaining children.  Instead, like the bravest child imaginable, he insisted on trying to entertain adults with his whimsical and biting parodies of our inner selves, but the adults did not find it very funny.  In truth, it wasn't very funny most of the time, and Man on the Moon forgets that more often than it remembers.  The new bio-pic  is helmed by director Milos Forman, (Amadeus, The People Versus Larry Flynn), and powered by a great performance by Jim Carrey, but somewhere along the way its gears get off track. 

The film basically charts the meteoric rise of Andy Kaufmann, and then cushions his sharp fall by rearranging the events in his life.  These liberties should be O.K. with us though, because we have to remember that Andy himself tells us in the opening of the movie (in his foreign man accent) that most of the events of his life have been moved around for dramatic purposes.  This is a brilliant opening sequence and is pure Andy Kaufmann, but the rest of the movie leaves us wanting more of that inventiveness worked into the structure. Instead, the filmmakers are content with a straightforward linear narrative of his life story, which is something Andy probably would have shuddered at. Briefly, we see the young Andy forcing his little sister to play audience to one of his routines involving barnyard noises.  Flashforward, and Kaufmann is a young man playing the exact same routine to a comedy club full of drunks.

One thing Forman captures perfectly throughout the film is the reaction of the audiences, perfectly conveying the anticipation and the disappointment of a crowd that has come to have a good time and desperately wants to believe they are not being had.  Andy is fired ("you don't even pay me," he tells his boss) but not before receiving a lecture about how this is show business, and, "without the business, there is no show."  One is reminded of another recent biopic in which a rising star is told that his style will never play to the public. Private Parts showed Howard Stern fighting the system of network bullies, but one thing Howard had over Kaufmann was that he understood the business end. Howard knows ratings and market shares and what is working and what is not, and on top of it all knows what is funny. 

Man on the Moon is a little inconsistent in that it will have us listening to Kaufmann saying, "I am not a comedian, I don't even know what a joke is,"  and then proceed to show us a montage of hilarious Latka scenes from the hit show Taxi.  Every one of those scenes displays inventiveness and precise comic timing, and leaves us with the question of, who was this Andy Kaufmann then?  Rather than looking like a risk taker, Carrey's Kaufmann comes across as somebody who is choosing to play it safe.  It is so much simpler to incite a crowd to hate you, than to get them to laugh at you. However, this film's agenda is to lionize, not to examine, and so it just barely skirts the edges of what is the real story: a man who instinctively knows how to please, but chooses to alienate because it easier for himself. 

Danny Devito as George Shapiro has a hard job to do, just as the man he plays probably did.  He has to respond to a person he is not entirely sure is sane or brilliant, not to mention he has to book this person into places like Harrah's in Las Vegas.  He effectively conveys the mannerisms of a consummate professional who, though he has been dealing with quirky celebrities all of his life, has never come across something quite like this.  Through out the film we watch Shapiro gently try to slide Kaufmann's round peg into different square holes, only to be undermined at every turn by Kaufmann himself.  Andy is operating at what he thinks are levels above the normal comedy mentality, but after the famous Keep Andy or Dump Andy Saturday Night Live Poll (only 28% were for Andy) Shapiro correctly points out that, "this is the hippest audience in all of television,"  and they aren't getting it.

One of the problems this film faces is that there is still a question as to Kaufmann's genius. The bits recreated in the movie are very funny, but we have to remind ourselves that we are in on the joke and that the instances are being condensed for our viewing pleasure. At one point of his career Kaufmann would read The Great Gatsby in its entirety to college audiences who would demand to see him do Latka.  It is really hilarious to us, but we didn't have to pay money and see that, nor did we have to endure the entire show. We also did not have to suffer the insults of Tony Clifton, the lounge singer from Hell (presented nicely in the movie as Kaufman's alter ego.) In the type of biopic that this is reaching to be, the genius must be held absolute.  Kaufmann walks a fine line between innovator and jackass, and in the end we end up feeling as if we haven't had anything explained to us, and we don't know much more about Andy Kaufmann (or how Milos Forman or Jim Carrey feel about Andy Kauffman) than we did before we took out seats in the theatre.

There are delightful moments that abound in the film.  It is very neat to see a good many of the actual celebrities playing themselves in the different vignettes of Andy's life.  Wrestler Jerry Lawler does a great job with Carrey in recreating the famous Late Night with David Letterman standoff, complete with Dave playing himself.  Courtney Love shows once again that she needs to move on to some meatier dramatic roles and see what she can do. 

And then there is Jim Carrey, whose talent is growing with every film.  He is practically seamless when he is playing the onstage Kaufmann, but seems a little more aloof and somewhat uneven when he is playing the behind the scenes Kaufmann.  It is as if he, like the whole film in general, was afraid of making a conscious choice to play it in one direction.  Still it is amazing to watch his reactions, especially at the very end when Kaufmann realizes he himself has been had by one of the biggest con-games going.

Man On the Moon is a great movie for the holidays, and will make you laugh and feel good, but the obvious designs it has on the Oscars may prove a bit wishful. 

Art Hennessey 1/7/2000

This seemingly biographical sketch of the life of Andy Kauffman stars Jim Carrey, Courtney Love, and Danny Devito. Although Carrey's portrayal of Kauffman finds the comedian of Ace Ventura fame in his funniest and wittiest role to date, the portrayal is also some of the best character acting Carrey has ever given us. He delves deep into the mind of Andy Kauffman, and leaves his audience believing that Kauffman has been reincarnated in some sort of romantic way.

The story of Kauffman is the tale of a man who took a boyhood act that involved a Howdy Doody puppet to the comedy stage. Man On the Moon shows Kauffman at every sequence of his life: from the unsuccessful standup comic of the club scene to the successful star of TV sitcom Taxi to the Tennessee wrestling circuit. From there the film turns to the darker note of Kauffman's life, his only true bout, his struggle with the cancer that eventually takes his life. Andy Kauffman knew well what it was like to be loved and hated, but more often than not, just hated, for his dry humor and teenage antics.

His last hurrah comes when he spends his own money to play Carnegie Hall to a packed audience, complete with the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Afterwards, he takes the whole audience out for milk and cookies.

For the layman, Man On the Moon is a superficial, yet realistic introduction into the life of one of America's greatest comedians. For hard-core Kauffman fans who have seen I'm From Hollywood, a thorough documentary  of Kauffman's career as a pro-wrestler, Man On the Moon will be a delight that falls short in that area. I think it is clearly one of the best films of the year and will probably be rented a lot in the years to come.

Todd Ballard 3/31/2000