Man on the Moon: A-

Andy Kauffman was a bizarre dude, let's go ahead and get that one thing straight right now. When he was at the center of pop culture he staged the most elaborate and zany gags, things like inter-gender wrestling champion of the world and the lounge lizard Tony Cliffton. The audience, regardless of whether they found it funny or not had to react in someway. They had to become engaged. The rapturous, enjoyable, witty, emotional, and strangely opaque comedy/biopic from Milos Forman explores the life of Kauffman. We see his childhood, his friends, his career, his girlfriend, and ultimately his death. That really isn't relevant. What matters is that Kauffman, played by Jim Carrey, is such a basket of scintillating energy and motion that you can help but join in on his own private brand of subversive fun, not to mention the nimble cast that surrounds him. The movie itself is far more interested in the gags he created than the drama they produced. His inner circle, including his writing partner Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti), his agent George Shapiro (Danny DeVito), and his girlfriend Lynne (Courtney Love), support him for better or worse. Better being the absolutely amazingly climatic show he puts on at Carnegie Hall and worse being his slow battle and ultimate death from lung cancer. Heartwrenching stuff, and it's suprising that such emotion works in such a funny movie. The only missteps involve the real Andy Kauffman: why did he fall for Lynne, why was he so upset at his betraying audience? I guess in the end it was true what they said about the Taxi star: there really wasn't a real Andy Kauffman.