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Being John Malkovich Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 67 Reviews)

Seriously strange
This is a seriously weird movie. The frustrated puppeteer, Craig, prostitutes himself by becoming a file clerk at a soulless office on floor 7 1/2. It's straight out of Dilbert. The weird things Craig finds there seem to me to point up the bizarre things we do in our real offices every day. (I work in a windowless office myself, where hardly a day goes by without management coming up with some new way of making my job harder.) The movie only gets stranger from there. For no apparent reason, Craig falls in love with his heartless co-worker Maxine, a woman whose most striking trait is a willingness to do anything for money. Craig's wife Lotte falls for Maxine as well, and they carry on a love affair by taking trips through the head of John Malkovich. All the characters in the film are completely off their rockers.The send-up of our society's obsession with celebrities is hilarious.

The fact is, in the U.S. today we are living in a society that has gone completely bonkers. The standard of living in America has declined an amazing amount in the last few decades, yet we still hear lots of rosy figures about economic growth. We line up to apply for 30 years of debt slavery in exchange for a suburban Colonial with a two-car garage, then drive an hour and a half each way to get there every day. We sell off our planetary birthright for a cheap toaster from Wal-mart. Our politicians fall over each other to spend money the country doesn't have for a war we don't need. Even after New Orleans, people seem to believe that global warming isn't a big deal. The fact is, the party that cheap oil brought us is coming to an end. If you think life in the U.S. is crazy now, wait and see what it will be like in ten years when the population has grown by another few million and the resources are running out. (For more on this, see Kunstler's book "The Long Emergency.")

When I look at America today, I think of the movie Being John Malkovich. We have invested our country's lifeblood in a suburban lifestyle with no future. Are we going to wake up, or are we just going to keep on going down this road to nowhere?

So Refreshing
I am amazed at how clean that Kaufmans films are. I mean they are really some very convuluted and jigsawed films...that consistently are flawless and so very, very watchable. I love this movie. Its so smart, so creative and yes, so original.

They performances are EXCELLENT, the music perfect and the direction delicate and precise. Just a wonderful film that most have seen, but for those that have yet to, do yourself a favor and check it out. It was like nothing I imagined and took me on a ride through the obscure I rarely like, but in this case fell in Love.

A great film, matching all the componets for a near perfect experience.

A crowning acheivement of the "indie" era
One inventive scene follows another in this dark comedy from writer Charlie Kaufman and Director Jonze. For a few glosious years in the late nineties, Hollywood was informed by the spirit of independent films. This was one of the top results.

So, yes: if you often use the phrase "weird" to describe people, films, music, etc., this might not be your bag.

Craig Swartz (Cusack) is a talented but unappreciated puppeteer who is forced to take a job filing in an office. He soon makes two discoveries that become intertwined: that he is smitten with the brassy and cruel Maxine, who works his building; and that, hidden behind a file cabinet, his office contains a portal into in the mind of actor John Malkovich. Those who enter the portal see and feel everything John does for 15 minutes, before being ejected onto the Jersey Turnpike. Maxine decides that she and Craig should exploit the portal, charging $200 per "ride." Meanwhile, Craig's wife (Diaz) gets addicted to the portal, decides she is a trans-sexual, and also falls in love with Maxine.

Yes, it sounds crazy, and it is; but the script and the director manage to make it work. The film is funny both in the traditional sense, with clever dialogue and semi-normal situations; but hilarious in the I-can't-believe-these-guys-thought-of-this sense. Furthermore, the unusual circumstances of the story make it engrossing, since it is literally impossible to predict what might happen next. This truly makes for an adventure in film-watching.

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