Are you a person who has never seen Taxi and has never even heard of Andy Kaufman before?  Perhaps a Jim Carrey fan?  If the answer is yes, pay attention to this review; all of us who went fit into that category, and all of us had the same opinion of the film: thumbs up. 

I generally agree with EW’s Owen Gleiberman (he and I are the only people I know of who hated Happy, Texas) so I pay attention to his opinions.  Owen said Man on the Moon was the best movie of the year.  I’d hardly go that far, but it is an excellent movie with a great performance by Jim Carrey.  Now that I think about it, I would love to see Jim Carrey and Denzel Washington both win Golden Globes.  I think they’re both tremendous actors and for the record, I think Courtney Love is pretty good, too. 

I left the theater really intrigued by Andy Kaufman, and I attribute that wholly to Carrey’s embodiment of him.  From the opening sequence, Carrey is just a pleasure to watch.  He delivers a passionate portrayal of Kaufman that arises from the complete submersion of his own ego, which he hasn’t managed since Doing Time on Maple Drive.  He almost pulled it off in Truman Show, and the promise of that performance comes to full fruition here. 

Man on the Moon chronicles performance artist Andy Kaufman, who did wholly original and unpopular things like wrestling women, abusing audience members and reading the Great Gatsby from start to finish in a British accent.   His mission in life was essentially to fuck with the minds of the audience, and undeniably, he did that in ways that nobody else ever has.  

Courtney Love pulls off another solid performance here in the effort to prove she can actually act. As always, Paul Gianitti makes a great addition to any cast, here playing Andy’s comic partner, Bob Zamuda.  Danny DeVito is an odd casting choice as Kaufman’s agent, since DeVito himself was a Taxi co-star of Kaufman’s and should really have been playing himself.  However, since I haven’t seen a single episode of Taxi, it bothered me not at all.  

Personally, I think Kaufman was onto something when he decided that to make his audience angry or uncomfortable was better than to have them be bored.  He wanted to truly engage the audience, but he did it in a way that left them out of the joke: that made them dislike him. I think he should have gone in the other direction and made it a positive experience as well as an unpredictable one. 

I have no idea how accurate this movie really is, or if Kaufman was actually as endearing as Carrey makes him.  So far I’ve heard about a number of inaccuracies in the name of dramatic license. Thanks to the great performances here, notably Carrey’s, I’m interested to find out the whole story.