Adaptation. 2002

Reviews (14)

1. J

   Jitender 8 月 24, 2026

   Being Charlie Kaufman

   1,590 3
2. D

   DirkH 8 月 24, 2026

   A movie about a book to screenplay adaptation of the movie you’re watching …….. sheer genius!

   3,066 5
3. T

   Thomas Flight 8 月 24, 2026

   Ironically this starts brilliantly but once Kaufman starts applying the McKee formula I honestly just kinda get bored. Maybe that’s the point?

   1,631 11
4. C

   coffee 8 月 24, 2026

   very relatable that Kaufman’s immediate response to Being John Malkovich’s success was a healthy dose of suicidal self-reflexive wallowing, if only mine resulted in screenplays like this

   5,719
5. M

   Matthew Christman 8 月 24, 2026

   I remember the exact moment in Adaptation when it went from being a great movie to one of the my all time favorites: the low speed car chase between the Kaufmans and Susan Orlean. This was the moment I realized that, after two acts spent carefully creating rich, interesting characters and struggling with the difficulties of creating truthful art, writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze were going to intentionally set fire to the whole construction with an empty Hollywood-style action ending. It’s a ballsy move, and it pays off handsomely: not only does it cut the Gordian knot of the how to deal with the tough subject matter, but it’s also a point blank indictment of narrative cinema’s inherent limitations. Combine that with Nicholas Cage’s last known unironically good performance, and you’ve got the makings of a post-modern triumph that manages to express real emotion while also undermining the Robert McKee screenwriting model.

   3,969 17
6. E

   Evan 8 月 24, 2026

   I’m a failure. I never even finished school. I think about death too much. My brain is a prison. I’m getting fatter. My hair is too ginger in the sun. The 9-5 job I work is mindless. I’m estranged from my family. I’ve had addiction issues for ten years. They’re becoming a part of me. Just when I start to get clean, something sends me into relapse. I’m twenty-four but fifty seems imminent. I have spells of manic depression. Sometimes I get lonely. I wish I had a better life. I get chest pains and migraines, I need glasses because of an astigmatism which makes my left eye abnormally misshaped compared to the right. I write scripts but never finish,…

   1,530 23
7. S

   san 8 月 24, 2026

   This takes the concept of meta and self-awareness in movies to the nth degree. It’s so clever, so heartwarming, so heartbreaking, so sentimental.

   1,046
8. L

   Lucy 8 月 24, 2026

   @ charlie kaufman: are u ok dude

   4,250 4
9. S

   Sean Fennessey 8 月 24, 2026

   No one makes the quiet stuff loud quite like Kaufman. This time, I was struck by how hard but clearly it works to animate the experience of falling into and out of a good book, how certain passages, pages, chapters can dissolve in your hands, while others stop you dead, and off into a daydream. The anxiety of writing—or not writing—is the loud here, but the reading—of Orlean, Laroche, Darwin, McKee, Kaufman’s own words—feels most perceptive. I wish Spike could adapt him forever.

   1,463 4
10. J

    Jay 8 月 24, 2026

    girlfriend didnt realise both brothers were the same actor for 40 minutes

    1,961 6
11. K

    Karsten 8 月 24, 2026

    Whoever told me to add this to the 100 Summer Movies list, thank you. I think I just fell in love with film all over again.

    2,125 4
12. K

    ksenija 8 月 24, 2026

    meryl streep and chris cooper humming a dial tone together over the phone is a huge quarantine mood

    1,657 3
13. C

    CinemaSerf 4 月 18, 2022

    When you watch some of Nicolas Cage’s more recent stuff you do wonder how on earth he ever became a star in the first place. Well, this is one of the films that reminds us why. He is a struggling screenwriter (“Charlie”) charged with adapting a novel about orchids written by “Susan Orlean” (Meryl Streep). Mental block would be putting it mildly – he simply has no idea how to make it work for “Valerie” (easily one of the less abstruse roles played by Tilda Swinton). Moreover, he is constantly hassled by his twin brother “Donald” who is writing his own story – one that his sibling thinks is riddled with flaws and inconsistencies. The book he must adapt centres around the activities of “Laroche” (Chris Cooper) who had a habit of going with his Seminole pals to remove rare plants from a nature reserve. Illegal? Well not if you know your way around the Floridian penal code, and the ensuing court case is what entices “New Yorker” reporter “Orlean” to write his story. Initially sceptical of her rather uncouth subject matter – not helped by his missing front teeth, she discovers there is much more to the man and his provision of a green powder soon helps her to relax! What now ensues nicely marries the threads of the storylines as both Cage characters, an excellently enigmatic Cooper, and the unfulfilled Miss Streep find themselves gradually drawn together for an admittedly pretty far-fetched denouement (pronounce denooeymont). Cage plays the two characters with considerable skill; he juggles his characters’ frustrations with his writing, his love life, his brother and his own reluctance to meet the author engagingly and at times he can make you squirm in your seat a bit. There is plenty of humour, and the all but two hours just flies by. If nothing else, it does make you appreciate just how difficult is is to turn a novel into a film – and might explain why so few people are actually any good at it!

14. G

    Gimly 7 月 26, 2020

    I’m reacting the way the world does to movies about making movies about making movies. I mean come on, Charlie Kaufman, some of us have work in the morning, damn.

    _Final rating:★★½ – Not quite for me, but I definitely get the appeal._