. We see the action of the book as we see Kaufman struggle to adapt it into a movie. This is presumably a somewhat true story, as Charlie Kaufman is the real life screenwriter of Adaptation.
Few recent movies have conveyed so forcefully how people can feel shut out by their own lack of passion, how they yearn to end the emptiness.
EmanuelLevy.Com
December 30, 2009
An impressive follow-up to Being John Malkovich, Adaptation is even more playful, amusing, metanarrative and metaphysical than Jonze's first film, plus it has Nicolas Cage in a dual role and Meryl Streep in one of her wildest turns.
It's the sort of movie that keeps reinventing itself and nudging us in the ribs as it does. You'll want to see it soon, because everyone you know will be talking about it.
At all times, "Adaptation." carries the thrillingly unpredictable charge of a film writing itself before your eyes. Spike Jonze matches Charlie Kaufman's tumble through time, neuroticism, fact and fiction with depictions of creation at a cellular level.
Mired in the inertia of Charlie's writer's block, as if the real Kaufman never found his own passion for the material.
Orlando Sentinel
January 09, 2003
One-of-a-kind near-masterpiece.
Film4
March 13, 2009
Adaptation would all be insufferably clever-clever were its motivation not so genuine. Instead it is experimental, funny, with a tightly-repressed anger and a desire to dig out truth rather than take refuge in the usual artifice.
A fine accomplishment from all involved, especially Charlie Kauffman, who has written a bewildering and captivating movie, which bares his mind, heart and soul.
