Mmm... Simpsons Analogies...
There's an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is tugging on the tail of a pig he's kidnapping for reasons not immediately relevant here. "Curly, straight! Curly straight!" Homer observes, with inexhaustible, albeit increasingly redundant, enthusiasm. The pig gets pretty irritated. Whether or not you like Adaptation, the new film from the folks who brought us the astoundingly original Being John Malkovich, depends on what you think of Homer's little game. "Real, not real! Real, not real!" the movie says, again and again. And again and again and again. Maybe you're like Homer, and this deceptively simple maneuver is enough in itself to amuse you for two hours. Me, I can't help feeling more than a little like the poor pig by the end.

I'm going to reluctantly give Adaptation a mild panning, then, but I should say three things first.

1. Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter and lead character of Adaptation, proves again that he's more clever and unique than anybody else working in Hollywood right now. If it comes down to a choice between seeing Adaptation and The Hot Chick, please see Adaptation, warts and all. He's fumbled this one a bit, but Kaufman deserves the chance to make more movies a million times more than Rob Schneider does. Sorry, Rob.

2. The performances range from very good to wonderful. Nicholas Cage has de-hackified long enough to remind us that he's better than nearly anyone else at making improbable characters with bizarre motivations seem perversely sympathetic. Speaking of perversely, any film that has Meryl Streep brushing her teeth while stoned isn't a total loss.

3. In spite of some very funny moments, as might be inferred from the previous sentence, Adaptation isn't a comedy. If you go in knowing this, you might well enjoy it more than I did.

Being Tail Tugging!
Adaptation is a semi-autobiographical movie, except when it's not. It's about Charlie Kaufman's inability to turn a book he loves (Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief) into a screenplay. He doesn't want to crank out the inevitable Hollywood contraption by tacking love interests, car chases, and life lessons onto a story about an unusual man obsessed with rare flowers. But it proves maddeningly difficult to make the virtues of Orlean's account camera-friendly. Curly.

Charlie's problems are compounded by his sweet but dim twin brother Donald. Donald's good with people, and Charlie isn't. He's working on a screenplay as derivative and obvious as Charlie's is unprecedented and obscure. Donald is making progress with his work; Charlie isn't. Outside of the world of the film, Charlie Kaufman doesn't have a twin brother. Straight.

... Same thing we do every night...
Cage, playing both brothers, makes them both more interesting than they have any right to be, given that their relationship seems cribbed directly from Pinky and the Brain. (I love Pinky and the Brain, miss it something awful, but still.) Kaufman's really convincing and honest about the trials of writing: the loneliness, the transparent procrastination, the misdirected desire and/or lust. Cara Seymour, in a small but crucial role, is heart-breaking as the woman Charlie's too self-absorbed to kiss. The movie even succeeds, perhaps more than Kaufman realizes it does, at making a book about flowers compelling. The snippets of The Orchid Thief that we see illustrate both why Charlie loves the book and why he can't adapt it. Contrary to the old proverb, sometimes words tell us more about our inner lives than pictures, even moving pictures, ever could.

This all sounds good, and it is, but Kaufman doesn't trust it enough. At a key moment, Donald pitches in on the screenplay, and we get all the Hollywood crap that Charlie hates by way of an ending. This is supposed to be ironic, or something, but it's not funny. Not that it has to be funny, but it doesn't need to be as mean and disinterested as it is, either. We're reminded that life isn't art, that the characters on the screen, even if they're named after and based on real people, are finally just narrative components. There's a lot of truth in this, but I can't help thinking that the movie ends up sneering at the audience for actually caring about the characters. The difference between fact and fantasy isn't exactly the same as the difference between sincerity and insincerity. It's not dishonest or "Hollywood" to feel real feelings for people who aren't real, and I resent being told otherwise. Kaufman's thought of this already, of course, and sprinkles the screenplay with exactly the kind of objections I'm making, so it might be just pigheaded or ungrateful to complain about a film that's this ambitious and intelligent for losing its heart in the pursuit of big ideas. Oh, well, oink oink oink.