Perhaps the cleverest Hollywood movie of its generation, Adaptation is a loose adaptation of Susan Orlean's novelistic non-fiction book The Orchid Thief. It is also a unique exercise in autobiographical fantasy on the part of screenwriter Charles Kaufman (who shares credit with his fictional brother) and a worthy follow-up to director Spike Jonze's first Kaufman-scripted movie Being John Malkovich. Opening on the set of Being John Malkovich, with the writer (played by an intense Nicolas Cage) ordered out of the way by a minion, Adaptation. proceeds to follow more strands than spaghetti.
The neurotic Kaufman wins the job of turning Orlean's book into a script and has trouble getting a handle on it, while his more upbeat brother (also Cage) takes a Robert McKee scriptwriting seminar and cranks out a serial killer screenplay that attracts a major buzz. In flashbacks, Orlean (Meryl Streep) works on a New Yorker article and then a book about "orchid thief" John Laroche (Chris Cooper), a toothless Sam Shepard figure who heads a crew of Seminoles who poach rare flowers ostensibly in order to preserve them from extinction, encouraging the Darwinian process of adaptation essential to evolution. Kaufman ends up taking a seminar with McKee (Brian Cox, hilarious) and the film changes (or adapts) into a bizarre Hollywood thriller with drugs manufactured from flowers, a shoot-out between the writers and the subjects in the Florida everglades and a defiant climactic use of a plot device (deus ex machina) and narrative strategy (voice-over) McKee has ordered Kaufman not to use.
So dazzling that it defuses the argument that the hero genuinely has no idea what to do with his material, this film examines the rules of filmmaking and breaks them, shoots off in all directions (a brief history of life on earth sped up) but is held together by performance and direction, and will give the viewer enough material for a week's worth of debates and arguments afterwards. --Kim Newman
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Utter bore I was going to do an indepth review of this movie, but then decided why should I put the effort in when nobody on the movie did? The acting is the best part of the movie, they create an empathy that is the only thing keeping you for turning the TV off. The storyline, plot and development are not exploited to the full potential, the idea is there but the execution is not. Don't be fooled into thinking this is a beautiful movie that will keep you interested and leave you stunned, as it will... more info
Loved it! This film is very unique in its narrative and very clever. I loved the comedic moments in the film from Nicholas Cage, and Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep are hilarious as John Laroche and Susan Orlean. Its a different kind of story where the first part of the film is based on true life with Susan Orlean writing a book about John Laroche, the Orchid thief. Ther meetings are shown in flashbacks as Charlie Kaufman is attempting to write a screenplay about the book. The second part of the film is complete... more info
the reviewer starts to write As Brad Pitt sits down at his laptop he wonders who will pretend to be him in the film of him writing his review on Amazon. He looks in the mirror and is slightly startled by the sight of a bald man with a big nose and bad skin.
You're guaranteed to be bored out of your skull This film is so bad i felt like someone was trying to punish me very VERY slowly how the actors looked at the script and thought "Hey, this'll make millions" must have been either drunk or stoned or both, and the leas said about the film the better.
![Adaptation [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51C1D3KRR2L._SL160_.jpg)
