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Being John Malkovich Customer Reviews (37 - 39 of 67 Reviews)

Mad, Provocative, Astonishing
Being John Malkovich is a movie that defies description. The opening scene plunges the viewer into a wild, funny, and incredibly bizarre world that doesn't relent until well after the final credits start rolling.

The plot itself is intricate and discourages passive viewing, and is layed out in such a refreshingly understated fashion that you won't even realize just how unusual what you are seeing actually is. The story involves a down and out puppeteer (John Cusack) who starts work in a "filing company" in an office that has to be seen to be believed. While working there, he discovers a hole in the wall that is a portal to John Malkovich's mind. Along with a mysterious and beautiful coworker(Catherine Keener), Cusack's character starts a company that gives people who are tired of being themselves, the chance to enter the portal and be John Malkovich. Eventually Malkovich himself gets wind of the company (how and why this happens is another element that defies description) and the movie enters a new realm of engaging wierdness. This movie is not wierd in the sense of most 90s "wierd" movies (i.e. externally eccentric, but essentially lifeless characters), but is wierd the way a Van Gogh painting is or a piece of music by Scriabin or Schonberg is. The acting is absolutely superb (Cameron Diaz, for example, shows herself to have a real sense of irony in her self-effacing performance), and it is a lot of fun to imagine what Malkovich himself must have been thinking while filming the movie. A portal to his mind indeed would be handy in this respect.

Finally, the film explores what it means to be a person in an existence in which we are limited by our own consciousness. The film plays on this theme in inventive ways, most revealingly I think, in a scene in which Malkovich enters his own mind. The conclusions that the movie draws from this are quite surprising, and a little depressing. Do not hesitate to watch this film. Enjoy!

A refreshingly original movie.
After reading a few reviews of this movie it is clear that it is a movie that you either love or hate. Personally, I love it. It is easily the best movie of 1999, and fully deserved its three Oscar nominations. John Cusack is well cast as a struggling puppeteer whose life takes a strange turn when he discovers a hidden door in his office. Catherine Keener and Cameron Diaz also put in fine performances. John Malkovich has a tough role to play but pulls it off with conviction. If you are expecting a laugh-a-minute comedy then this movie probably isn't for you. Although it has it's funny moments, these are subtly played - like Cusack applying for a filing job on the seven and a halfth floor, which has rather low ceilings (low overheads you see, so the savings can be passed onto the customer...). The overall premise is pure fantasy and requires suspension of disbelief but if you are prepared to go along with it, this movie is well worth seeing. It is very thought-provoking. Finding a category for this movie would be a tough job, but the best I can come up with is 'bizarre existentialist philosophical comedy' (but don't let that put you off...). The DVD itself is very good. Excellent picture and sound, and some extras although these are of questionable quality. The 'interview' with director Spike Jonze is quite frankly baffling. It takes place in a moving car and he ends up getting out and vomiting. Whatever. So, I wholeheartedly recommend this. It easily slots into my top 10 movies. One of the most original movies I have ever seen.

Extremely Original and Entertaining; Decent Extras
This movie is very funny, and as importantly, very original. Spike Jonze's directorial humor is perfectly aligned with the script, and he pulls off even the most challenging scenes successfully.

Likewise, the actors are also up to the task of being believable or sympathetic in the midst of all the absurdity. As almost everyone knows, this movie is about a character finding a portal into John Malkovich's brain, and it takes a lot of skill on the part of everyone involved in the film to make the movie as good as its premise.

John Cusack is great as the down-on-his-luck puppeteer who goes to work for a bureaucratic company whose most distinguishing characteristic is its location on the half-height "seventh-and-a-half" floor, where everyone has to stoop over.

Catherine Keener is also excellent as Cusack's foil, a hard-nosed opportunist who tempts Cusack away from his wife (an unrecognizable Cameron Diaz) and stops at nothing to realize her own fantasies.

The film is filled with metaphor, but is rarely heavy-handed. The chief metaphor involves Cusack's roll as a puppeteer, whether with marionettes, or the body of Malkovich. It turns out that almost every character wants to manipulate another character to achieve his or her own goals.

Director Jonze does a nice job of intertwining the visually fantastic (the portal to Malkovich, the 7 1/2 floor, etc) with the utterly real (the New Jersey Turnpike, Cusack's street corner puppet box), so you never get too far removed from the reality of the characters' relationships with each other. In other words, Jonze creates a fantastic world but keeps you connected to the people who live in it.

Jonze's best moments come near the end of the film, which I'll try not to spoil -- one involves a flash back sequence of an animal, and the other involves two characters travelling through a third character's memories. As far as I know, nothing like it has ever been done on film before, and both are done with a sense of humor that belies their genius.

This movie is one of three or four in 1999 that I think will be remembered for changing the direction of film away from all the "Pulp Fiction" knock-offs that dominated the late nineties. The success of movies like this, hopefully, will encourage film makers to have a bit more confidence in their audiences.

The disc has several extras, though it lacks a commentary track (which would have been the icing on the cake). Two of the extras are extended segments of programs that appeared on television within the film. (In other words, a TV in the movie was showing something. These extras are full-sized, full length versions of what the TV was showing...A similar thing is done on the Criterion Silence of the Lambs DVD). Another extra is a 20-minute or so exploration of the puppeteer "pulling the strings" behind the scenes of the film. It serves as a good introduction to a field of entertainment you probably haven't given a lot of thought to lately.

Another extra is a brief, parodic interview with the director while he's driving his car. It's a good for a laugh or two, though he (purposely) doesn't offer much insight into the film. One other extra feature is footage of an extra who had to drive her car in the background of a shot on the NJ Turnpike, along with a couple of dozen other extras. It's shot with a shaky camcorder by, and is entertaining because the girl is really funny, although, again, it doesn't really tell you much about how this movie (or any other movie) is made.

Finally, there is a brief segment of a guy with a camcorder (the same guy who did the other two extras) interviewing "aspiring puppeteers" about the movie at it's premiere in LA. Very brief, and will make you laugh once.

The sound and video quality are fine. The movie does not have a particularly demanding soundtrack.

All in all, this is a great movie, one which will probably be considered somewhat significant a few years from now, and the extras on the DVD are good, though not great.

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