With all the talk of Spike Jonze's Her for Best Picture this year, I went through my stack of "owned but haven't watched yet"s and pulled out Adaptation. to give it a go. Now, this is gonna be a different film than Her, considering Her is Spike Jonze written and directed and Adaptation. is a Charlie Kauffman written film, but they are general collaborators and ... you know, all this preamble doesn't really add much, since I got some things to say that will probably make a few people unhappy.
I do not like Meryl Streep. I find her to be hammy and unbelievable. In everything she does. To be fair, I have not seen her oldest stuff, but everything I see since I started collecting films 10 years ago, I cannot stand her. And this film is no exception. Her drug binge sequence was painfully boring and unbelievable, made all the worse by the incredible performance by Chris Cooper (Oscar winning performance, I should add). Chris Cooper was a delight, and really did a great job.
But really, all praise to Nicolas Cage here. He played two characters who always felt like they were onscreen together, were always believable, and were always distinct. That is very very hard to do. And he did amazingly. How he didn't win for Best Actor here I could not even begin to guess, because Brody's the Pianist was nowhere near as believable or difficult of a role.
This scene in particular was COMPLETELY unbelievable.
Grade: C-; Cage's and Cooper's performance A+
I can't read the name of the critic who was quoted on the poster you have above but I really can't agree with him/her. There was a lot of truly great stuff in this movie that eventually spun out of control and made a big mess like clay off a potter's wheel. It's sad really because I completely agree about Cage and Cooper's performances.
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