drqshadow reviewedFebruary 27, 2025
Andy Kaufman, the enigmatic, often inexplicable comic mastermind, gets a glossy Hollywood biopic, complete with a high visibility big-name plunge in the headline role. Man on the Moon gets the optics right, documenting the star’s most memorable gags amongst the din of a cigarette-stained 1970s comedy club (or network studio), and an inspired Jim Carrey clearly spent a lot of time and effort refining Kaufman’s childish charms and odd contradictions. The connecting biographical bits are lackluster at best, though, and the film’s determination to force-feed its own reality-bending meta mechanisms is more trouble than it’s worth.
At least the performances are good. Carrey really threw himself into this role, ruffling feathers with his dedication to method acting, and the results are worthwhile. Costars Paul Giamatti and Danny DeVito (who also produced) shoulder their share of the load as caring lifelong co-conspirators; a pair of sharp guys who alternate between blithely pressing buttons alongside the mad genius and being involuntarily pulled in his wake. There’s genuine sweetness in Carrey’s on-screen pairing with Courtney Love, who plays a composite of several Kaufman girlfriends. That’s a range I didn’t realize she had, a tricky mix of her usual no-frills, street-smart bitch and the compassionate soulmate who visibly understands, appreciates and accepts the troubled star in his troubled later life. Director Milos Forman worked with Love three years earlier, in The People vs. Larry Flynt, and must’ve seen something in her that the rest of us didn’t.
On that note, I was shocked to learn this was directed by the same man who brought us Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I guess it had been fifteen years since those films and his career was now well into its final act, but still, Man on the Moon feels awfully soft; an incomplete drama at best. For a story with so much real, unique flavor, it’s also dreadfully bland, with a far heavier focus on replicating its subject’s big career moments than understanding his own odd personality. Carrey’s rendition of Kaufman is noteworthy, and Andy’s bizarre comedy portfolio is always worth revisiting, but the film adds nothing to those beats and the original material is better enjoyed on its own.