Man on the Moon

I had been meaning to see this one for a long time. I kept seeing it in the rental shop and thinking that I would rent it, but something else always jumped into my hands. I guess there was that little voice inside me that said “Andy Kaufman was a big weirdo — and not really all that funny, come to think of it”. Luckily, the other voice, the one that said “Yeah, but Jim Carrey is always fun to watch”, that voice won out in the end. And I am very glad that it did. I enjoyed this movie from beginning to end. It is sometimes painful to watch, but so was Kaufman. And the movie does what it sets out to do: get a reaction. You can’t watch this movie or think about Kaufman without feeling something. The best part of the movie, by a long shot, was Carrey’s performance. Regardless of whether the movie stayed true to Kaufman (which it seems to from my own uninformed position, but what do I know?), Carrey’s performance carries the movie. (*****)