Man on the Moon
Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
The one thing that the best of today’s movies do is give the audience an overwhelming sense of place, a feeling that You Are There. These movies let us go places in our imagination that very few of us will ever get to go. No one will ever again sail past the moon in an Apollo capsule or ride the calm waters of the North Atlantic on Titanic. God willing, none of us will have to know what a giant amphibious landing on the French coast is like, or the inside of a Nazi death camp, or even the prisons in Silence of the Lambs or The Shawshank Redemption. And the movies are the only way we have to go to the bleak western town of Big Whiskey or the unnamed gangster town of Miller’s Crossing.
I say that to say that the best thing that Man on the Moon does is give us that You Are There feeling. The best bits in the movie are all recreations of Andy Kaufman’s stage act, as eerily impersonated by Jim Carrey. We get to see Kaufman struggling in Borscht Belt nightclubs, performing on Saturday Night Live, knocking them out (literally) on the college circuit, and really knocking them out as a wrestlemaniac. Man on the Moon is smart enough to know that we’ve all seen lots and lots of Taxi reruns — and that the Taxi cast is getting pretty old — and glides over Kaufman’s Taxi career lightly, focusing on the live stage act.
These are wonderful scenes, all of them, from Kaufman turning in a wicked Presley imitation to his Tony Clifton lounge singer act to his triumphal milk-and-cookies concert in Carnegie Hall. At Carnegie, Kaufman plays one of my favorite songs, the one I used to use to needle my married friends:
I’ve got spurs that jingle jangle jingle
As I go ridin’ merrily along
And they sing, Oh ain’t you glad you’re single
And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.
(Note: I am married now, and it doesn’t sound so funny anymore.)
Man on the Moon does the You Are There bit incredibly well, but it’s nowhere close to great movie status. The You Are There part of the best movies of the 1990’s is just a small part of their success — with Man on the Moon, it’s the whole show. The part of the movie that is not on stage serves mostly to set up the stage bits.
Towards the end, Man on the Moon turns somber (sort of) as Kaufman develops cancer. But, again, this is just a run-up to another classic performance, as Kaufman performs at his own funeral (and, maybe, beyond).
Man on the Moon is a great achievement for Carrey and for everyone else involved. It’s a great tribute to Andy Kaufman’s work. What it doesn’t have is a great story or characterization or anything like a plot. Probably, you won’t miss it, but it keeps Man on the Moon from being great or anywhere close to it. But should you see it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.