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Adaptation Details

2002 Certificate 15
  • Rated:
  • 60
  • from 26,383 members

Following up their acclaimed debut, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze are back to metaphysical moviemaking with ADAPTATION. The film stars Nicolas Cage as both Charlie Kaufman and his fictionalised identical twin brother Donald. While the boisterous Donald freeloads off his sibling and .. Read more

Starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton
Director Spike Jonze
Genres Drama

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Adaptation

Following up their acclaimed debut, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze are back to metaphysical moviemaking with ADAPTATION. The film stars Nicolas Cage as both Charlie Kaufman and his fictionalised identical twin brother Donald. While the boisterous Donald freeloads off his sibling and works on a serial-killer movie script, Charlie is tormented by both his own army of neuroses and his new project, adapting Susan Orlean's book THE ORCHID THIEF into a screenplay. As Charlie struggles to shape the nonfiction novel into a film, he begins writing himself into the story of Orlean (Meryl Streep), a sad-eyed journalist, and her subject, renegade Florida flower expert John Laroche (Chris Cooper). The resulting tale extends far beyond the scope of the book, stretching from Hollywood to New York to...Hollywood four billion years ago.
Equally as inventive as BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION revels in its gloriously absurd premise. Kaufman and Jonze skillfully sidestep the pitfalls of such a seemingly self-indulgent project, creating a multilayered film that focuses on the writing process as well as the nature of beauty, the beauty of nature, and dozens of other significant themes. Cage makes a stunning return to pre-Bruckheimer form in the roles of the Kaufman brothers, giving their identical appearances completely different personalities and making them believable to boot. Meanwhile, the consistently excellent Streep and the often underrated Cooper are perfectly matched as Orlean and Laroche. Even the less central roles are played by great actors--Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ron Livingston appear as supporting characters. Careening wildly between the hilarious, the ridiculous, and the poignant, Kaufman and Jonze's ADAPTATION is another fine example of their bravura yet sincere style of cinema.

Starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Judy Greer, Brian Cox, Ron Livingston, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Curtis Hanson, John Cusack, Cara Seymour, John Cu
Director Spike Jonze
Run time DVD: 1 hr 50 mins
Certificate Certificate 15
Genres Drama
Language DVD: English
Hearing-impaired English
Subtitles DVD: English, Hindi, Italian
Released DVD: 22 Sep 2008
Production year: 2002
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (6) of Adaptation

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  • 4 stars out of 5

    Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze again demonstrates his astonishing style and originality with this inventive comedy drama. Based on the Bafta-winning screenplay by previous collaborator Charlie Kaufman (who credits his fictitious twin brother Donald as co-writer, the first of many games Kaufman plays), the film takes the idea of life imitating art to new extremes. Instead of a straight adaptation of journalist Susan Orlean's non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, Jonze presents a surreal version of Kaufman turning the literary work into a screenplay. It's a dark, hilarious and visually intoxicating celluloid trip, made even more appealing by a riveting double turn from Nicolas Cage as both the creatively blocked Charlie and Donald, who's an aspiring screenwriter of action blockbusters. However, in a delicious tale crammed with such ingenuity, it's Meryl Streep who's the biggest revelation. She lets her hair down to incredible effect as the experience-hungry Susan Orlean, adding the final brilliant touch to a dazzling and emotionally vibrant movie.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006
  • 3 stars out of 4

    Witty, inventive, playful movie about a blocked writer trying out various approaches to intractable material before relying on Hollywood clichés to get him through to the end; it's much funnier than it sounds, aided by some stylish direction and expertly

    • Halliwell's Film Guide
    • Posted 02 Mar 2006

  • Most helpful member's review of Adaptation

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  • 52 out of 56 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 3 stars

    A truly surreal and enthralling film

    When Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter behind Being John Malkovich, was asked to write an adaptation of Susan Orlean's bestseller, The Orchid Thief, I don't think anyone could have imagined what he would come up with. Finding the task in hand overwhelmingly problematic, Kaufman's solution is to produce a script about his struggle to write the above screenplay.

    Are you following so far?

    Kaufman also creates himself a scriptwriting twin brother, entangles Orlean herself in a romantic sub-plot, throws in a few crocodiles for good measure and rounds the whole thing off using such conventional narrative practices that they become unconventional. Confused? You should be, but don't let that put you off.

    Kaufman and director Spike Jonze create a truly surreal and enthralling film which demands attention and serves up fantastic performances from its principle players. Nicolas Cage in the demanding dual role as Charlie and Donald Kaufman is superb, creating two engaging and sufficiently different characters.

    Meryl Streep follows her acclaimed performance in "The Hours" with an Oscar-nominated turn as Orlean, while Chris Cooper's role as orchid-poacher John Laroche quite rightly earned him a coveted little gold statue. A film unlike anything you've seen before and, because of that very fact, an experience I can not recommend more highly.

      • Chickenmaster from Newcastle upon Tyne
      • Posted 02 Nov 2003 18:13

  • Most recent members' review of Adaptation

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  • 1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

    Rated - 3 stars

    Adaptation Quirkfest

    Nicholas Cage is such a versitile actor - and not proud - innovative screen play, how true to hollywood? Perhaps and in-joke for those who work within its walls.

      • Adam Smith from Pengehurst marsh
      • Posted 08 Jan 2005 10:55

  • News and features

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    Where the Wild Things Are

    Spike Jonze: Mild Thing

    • 08 Dec 2009

    Over the course of more than two decades writing about films and interviewing filmmakers – hundreds and hundreds of them – Where the Wild Things director Spike Jonze stands out as one of the most difficult. We spoke for about half an hour, but mostly I spoke and he smiled, shrugged, or mumbled. It was as if he’d taken a vow of silence or something – or I was a cop and he was guilty as sin. Why? Because everything he wanted to communicate, he put into his movie. The rest Read more

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Rating breakdown

26,383 Member ratings
  • 100
2,297
  • 90
2,471
  • 80
4,426
  • 70
4,176
  • 60
4,360
  • 50
2,840
  • 40
2,146
  • 30
1,611
  • 20
1,358
  • 10
698

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    • Adaptation

    • Adaptation
      Following up their acclaimed debut, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze are back to metaphysical moviemaking with ADAPTATION. The film stars Nicolas Cage as both Charlie Kaufman and his fictionalised identical twin brother Donald. While the boisterous Donald ...