I enter the film while being literally oblivious of who is Andy Kaufman, as far as I know, the film is mostly famed because it hitherto has been Jim Carrey's most Oscar-worthy performance, yet being blatantly snubbed again after his drama venture in Peter Weir's THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998, 8/10).
So in my case, the film is a dedicative portrait of an eccentric entertainer whose ideology of performance is all about entertaining himself and treat his audience as a receptacle of his sensational idiosyncrasy and excruciatingly manipulative fabrications disguised as parody or mockery. Yet, during his short life-span (Andy passed away in 1984 at the age of 35), this methodology makes him a unique figure in the canvas of American comedians (although he would never condescend himself as a "comedian").
Apart from his best remembered role as Latka Gravas in ABC's sitcom TAXI (1978-1982), Andy's strikingly unorthodox gambits include the Foreign Man persona, Might Mouse lip- syncing, and singularly his alter-ego Tony Clifton, an audience-abusing lounge singer with off-key boorishness, all farcically re-enacted by the-one-and-only Jim Carrey, more hinges on visual gags than fusillading well-conceived punchlines, he vigorously pulls off a studious impersonation rather than reveling in his usual elastic facial stunts, in a way, Andy is much more closer to a performance artist than a funny man, staging appealing sensations to exploiting genuine emotions from audience, his motto is to always stay distinctively in advance of your audience, instead of pandering, he surprises them, especially in a provocative way (e.g. the inter-sexual wrestling sham), Carrey nails his psychology to the marrow in his transcendent effort. The rest of the cast is playing it safe around him mainly because most of the prototypes are still alive (some of them make cameos and others are simply playing themselves in a not-so-faraway time-frame), DeVito and Giamatti take a lion's share of their screen-time in comically constructing a layer of authenticity as Andy's agent George Shapiro and his creative parter Bob Zmuda, whereas Courtney Love is Lynne, Andy's romantic interest, instead, submerges herself as a subtler spectator to offer gravitas when the film needs in the second half as the ultimate death is looming large.
Surely it is also a refreshing maneuver to start the film with sheer Black & White sequences of Andy breaking-the-four-wall and kidding about this picture with his comical bent. The two-times Academy winning director Milo Forman steadily segues one skit after another, confidently concocts a mesmerizing montages of Andy's career highlights, and maintains an enigmatic aura of Andy's personal facet, in the final scenes, when an Andy impostor performs Gloria Gaynor's I WILL SURVIVE as Tony Clifton, at one time, we are all being tricked into believe the real Andy is still breathing the same air of ours, then the frame majestically pans through Lynne, George and Bob, suggests otherwise without unmasking the subject, such a class act ending.
Despite that some of the farces are too passé to appreciate nowadays, the film doesn't feel far-fetched in its nitty-gritty and it does arouse some stinging thoughts about how we perceive to be entertained from the showbiz, if only Andy could have lived longer to stand the test of time, is he a true legend in modulating the general taste of the mass or a shooting-star cannot prevent his ego from wearing out his routine antics.
So in my case, the film is a dedicative portrait of an eccentric entertainer whose ideology of performance is all about entertaining himself and treat his audience as a receptacle of his sensational idiosyncrasy and excruciatingly manipulative fabrications disguised as parody or mockery. Yet, during his short life-span (Andy passed away in 1984 at the age of 35), this methodology makes him a unique figure in the canvas of American comedians (although he would never condescend himself as a "comedian").
Apart from his best remembered role as Latka Gravas in ABC's sitcom TAXI (1978-1982), Andy's strikingly unorthodox gambits include the Foreign Man persona, Might Mouse lip- syncing, and singularly his alter-ego Tony Clifton, an audience-abusing lounge singer with off-key boorishness, all farcically re-enacted by the-one-and-only Jim Carrey, more hinges on visual gags than fusillading well-conceived punchlines, he vigorously pulls off a studious impersonation rather than reveling in his usual elastic facial stunts, in a way, Andy is much more closer to a performance artist than a funny man, staging appealing sensations to exploiting genuine emotions from audience, his motto is to always stay distinctively in advance of your audience, instead of pandering, he surprises them, especially in a provocative way (e.g. the inter-sexual wrestling sham), Carrey nails his psychology to the marrow in his transcendent effort. The rest of the cast is playing it safe around him mainly because most of the prototypes are still alive (some of them make cameos and others are simply playing themselves in a not-so-faraway time-frame), DeVito and Giamatti take a lion's share of their screen-time in comically constructing a layer of authenticity as Andy's agent George Shapiro and his creative parter Bob Zmuda, whereas Courtney Love is Lynne, Andy's romantic interest, instead, submerges herself as a subtler spectator to offer gravitas when the film needs in the second half as the ultimate death is looming large.
Surely it is also a refreshing maneuver to start the film with sheer Black & White sequences of Andy breaking-the-four-wall and kidding about this picture with his comical bent. The two-times Academy winning director Milo Forman steadily segues one skit after another, confidently concocts a mesmerizing montages of Andy's career highlights, and maintains an enigmatic aura of Andy's personal facet, in the final scenes, when an Andy impostor performs Gloria Gaynor's I WILL SURVIVE as Tony Clifton, at one time, we are all being tricked into believe the real Andy is still breathing the same air of ours, then the frame majestically pans through Lynne, George and Bob, suggests otherwise without unmasking the subject, such a class act ending.
Despite that some of the farces are too passé to appreciate nowadays, the film doesn't feel far-fetched in its nitty-gritty and it does arouse some stinging thoughts about how we perceive to be entertained from the showbiz, if only Andy could have lived longer to stand the test of time, is he a true legend in modulating the general taste of the mass or a shooting-star cannot prevent his ego from wearing out his routine antics.