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Starring Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito, Courtney Love, Paul Giamatti, Jerry Lawler, Vincent Schiavelli. Appearances
by Judd Hirsch, Marilu Henner, Christopher Lloyd, Carol Kane, Jeff Conaway, Peter Bonerz, George Shapiro.
Directed by Milos Forman.
Andy Kaufman (Carrey) is working the seedy New York bars. He's being fired even though he's playing for free because people are walking out on him. He does kiddie songs and puppet shows - no jokes or impressions. Some time later he begins working the more popular comedy clubs and begins to get laughs doing an impression of a Lithuanian simpleton, and a dead-on version of Elvis Presley. Talent agent George Shapiro (DeVito) is in the audience, and sees some potential in the mysterious comic. He signs him up, and soon Andy gets the big offer. He can do a classy sitcom Taxi and be the funniest one on it. But Andy balks at first. He has a low opinion of sitcoms, and only agrees to go on if an outrageous set of demands are met, including letting a two-bit nightclub singer Tony Clifton go on the show for four episodes a year, a person neither George nor the network execs (Schiavelli) have heard of. Andy wins. But he soon grows bored of the network straight-jacket, and with friend and collaborator Bob Zmula (Giamatti) he milks the Tony Clifton mystery for awhile. He then begins wrestling women as a way of acting the part of the villain. On the Merv Griffin Show, he picks out a woman from the audience Lynne Marguilies (Love), who he proceeds to taunt and then defeat on national TV. But he persuades her to go out with him, and she becomes his girlfriend. Things are going well until Taxi is cancelled, and he discovers he has cancer. Man On The Moon is a lovingly produced tribute to Andy Kaufman. The movie is largely produced by Andy's old friends Zmuda, DeVito and girlfriend Marguilies, and it's not surprising events are cast in a rosy glow. There is virtually nothing negative in the movie about themselves or about Andy. Andy is just a lovable eccentric who just wants to play practical jokes on the world. In fact, he's so pure, he never wanted to do Taxi and compromise his art by playing a lowly sitcom. Bob Zmuda is never angry that Andy has become the big star and he hasn't - he really just loves doing the practical jokes with Andy. Andy never yells, and never really gets mad. Lynne is set up in front of 20000 rabid Memphis wrestling fans, and then yells at him that she's not just a prop. She's mad for all of 3 seconds, and then lovingly kisses and makes up. The movie can't explain the contradiction between Andy's oft-stated goal of being the biggest comedy star around, and wanting to shock, confuse and insult his audience with his practical jokes that would prevent him from being that star. I highly doubt this is the total story. It would have been better had we seen the mercurial side of Andy that many reports said existed. Still, there is no denying the movie is often flat-out hilarious. I laughed as hard during this movie as with any this year. Especially as the nightclub-singing boor Tony Clifton, Carrey is extremely funny. His impressions of Latka and Elvis are uncannily accurate. Courtney is all sweetness and light as the woman Andy wrestled and beat, but who still agrees to a date with him afterwards. Lawler is quite good as the southern good-ol' boy defending the honour of all those southerners who Andy insulted. He brings back memories of the melodramatic fun wrestling often used to be, instead of the overheated, bad-boy crap the WWF serves up nowadays. DeVito, as usual, is solid as the loyal and sympathetic (perhaps too sympathetic) agent who good-naturedly goes along with Andy's stunts. But the real star of the show is Jim Carrey, who is simply sensational. He captures the look, style and mannerisms of Kaufman to the degree comic friend Richard Belzer said it was as if the spirit of Andy had possessed Carrey. Deserving of an Oscar nomination last year for The Truman Show, he is equally deserving this year and should receive one. It is pretty ironic the Golden Globes voters, after years of making bad nomination choices, are way ahead of the Academy Awards on this one. Carrey alone is reason enough to see Man On The Moon, an interesting but ultimately limited biography of Andy Kaufman.   
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