Man on the Moon Review
by "Jerry Bosch" (gbp AT d-g-s DOT com)December 26th, 1999
MAN ON THE MOON
Brilliant. Compelling. Honest. Different. Extraordinary.
This review has ended.
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(100 pages of blank space)
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Just kidding. I am required to do at least 500 words. (And they could all be superlatives.)
The idea of starting with the end is hardly brimming with novelty; it lacks the originality and outrageousness of Kaufman’s devices to keep the audience off balance, but in Man On The Moon it is a suitable harbinger of things to come. If Kaufman had used this device he would have extended the dead time long enough to get a strong reaction from the audience. The movie makes you wait a while, but they barely push the envelope where Kaufman would have torn it and thrown it to the air in pieces.
Nevertheless, a Hollywood project that is driven by integrity is a rare thing indeed, and when it achieves the level of quality and entertainment value of this movie, it easily stands out as one of the finest efforts of the mature American film industry. That this project came right out of the heart of its creators is exemplified by the fact, unprecedented to my knowledge, that the members of the cast of TAXI played themselves as they look today, without apologies for the age discrepancies. The audience is expected to understand that this is a nostalgic tribute, a contrite act of belated appreciation and formerly denied respect. Other people also play themselves whether their recapitulated actions were flattering or
unflattering.
But a great movie must entertain greatly, and Man On The Moon delivers solid entertainment, keeping your attention and curiosity from start to finish (or is it finish to finish?), and in the process it captures the essence and the tragedy of an exceptional entertainer. Man On The Moon proves that Hollywood can abandon the straight jacket of formulas and still succeed. Even Apollo XIII (man not on the moon) can not escape the formula rap, because in its case real life was true to formula, but Kaufman broke all the molds, and the absence of a detectable formula is one of the movie’s great virtues. Hollywood’s serious masterpieces tend to be sophisticated, its adventure blockbusters tend to be frantic, its sensitive masterpieces tend to be soft and soulful. But Man On The Moon is pathos without bathos, a serious movie that is very funny, a real movie that is not artsy, much less fartsy. Throw in Academy worthy performances by Jim Carey and Danny de Vito and the sense that you are seeing weird things that actually happened, mix it with total integrity and a lot of heart, add technical elements at the top of Hollywood’s present capabilities, subtract special effects, dirty words, nudity, sex scenes and explosions, top if off with hearty laughs and a sense of tragedy, and the result is a movie worthy of your intelligence; assuming that you have enough, since it takes a little more than is needed to love Titanic and The Green Mile. Those two are four star movies in a scale of five, but Man On The Moon gets 4 ½.
Jerry Bosch
Ah or dis-ah (gree) at
gbp@d-g-s.com
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
