Adaptation

Despite all the hype and the endless buzz about the awards potential for its screenplay and acting, I have to admit this movie just didn't feel as groundbreaking as I expected.
The core concept is actually really compelling, but it felt like the director lost steam halfway through. Instead of leaning into the fascinating obsession with orchids, they felt the need to throw in some drug subplots and weapons just to try and manufacture some excitement.
In the final twenty minutes, the whole thing devolves into total clichés:
Concept - 5
Acting - 4, Chris Cooper is absolutely stellar
Performance - 3.5

What are your thoughts?

Best,

film_freak
👋

Watching this movie without having any prior heads-up about what it was actually about, I was totally convinced I was watching some kind of true story, at least until the moment Donald Kaufman dies, or maybe even just a little bit before that point.
Since I don't really know anything about Charlie Kaufman, I was wondering if anyone here actually knows how much of this film is based on a true story?

The movie is more or less based on a true story. After Being John Malkovich, C. Kaufman actually worked on an Adaptation of the book Orchid Thief. He realized he had zero clue how to adapt it, so he just took his own struggles with the project and turned them into a whole new script. The guy doesn't actually have a twin brother, obviously, but you get the idea that some parts are totally made up...

A few thoughts.
Adaptation is a high-concept film. Not necessarily "high" as in "this is automatically good," but more like, "wow, what a wild idea, let's try to write a script around this no matter how the execution turns out."
The result is a decent enough flick that works fine in bits—like the Hollywood comedy stuff and the writing process—but it’s kind of weak as a whole. I’m mostly talking about that attempt at irony at the end, specifically playing around with the rule of the last third of the film. It feels like Kaufman knew he ran out of things to say and decided to act proud of it. Usually, when you use irony, you offer an alternative. Unfortunately, the end of Adaptation doesn't do that; it literally looks like Kaufman had no idea how to wrap things up, so he just gave us some cheap "playing with clichés" nonsense. Whatever, at least the acting and directing are solid. (I mean, the writing isn't terrible either, some ideas are pretty cool and funny, but overall it’s just sloppy)

Ouch, that was pretty rough...

Actually, no, it wasn't "terrible"... It just wasn't what I was expecting...

Let’s be real here: I’ve never seen Cooper at his absolute best, and you could say the same about Meryl. If they both walked away with an Oscar for this, I wouldn't even complain (even if I'm still rooting for Julianna Moora)...

There are stretches of the script that are nothing short of perfection, but the last thirty minutes of the film? Total garbage. I honestly couldn't believe how someone could build such a brilliant narrative for ninety minutes only to completely mess up the ending... Whether it was a mistake by Kaufman or Jonze's, I don't know, but that finale just doesn't work... At least for me...

Oh, and by the way, even though the ending ruins the whole experience for me, Adaptation is still one of the best-acted films of the last decade...

So here's the movie poster: directed by Spike Jonze
Written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman
and honestly, don't let that throw you off too much!
But man, they totally botched the ending, it ends up feeling like some cheap, low-budget action flick or something.

The movie is actually pretty decent; the plot holds up well,
right up until that final thirty minutes, just like someone else already mentioned above.

The acting is top-notch—Meryl Streep was fantastic, and Nicolas Cage killed it too,
but then everything hits the fan right at the end when things move way too fast,
leaving me feeling like there was zero logic or any real point to it all...

I honestly can't tell what happened; it feels like the director just ran out of steam or something.

All in all, it's a decent flick, but I'm giving it a solid three stars.

As for me, the ending was totally fine—honestly... nobody really brought up the cinematography, but I thought the camera work was great. For me, the movie’s a solid 5.👍

Hmm, it’s a pretty decent little flick—really clever concept, too, following the actual process of screenwriting (which works well as an adaptation of a book) for the very movie we're watching...

But, like everyone else has been saying, that ending is a total train wreck—honestly, you might want to just skip the last 20 minutes...

Honestly, though, this is easily one of the best movies of the year. And probably one of the most fun ones, too.

Donald Kaufman doesn't exist.

That phone call between Meryl Streep and Cooper is nothing short of legendary—it honestly deserves a spot in the history books.
I’m talking about stuff they should be teaching in high school textbooks.

It gets a bit sluggish at times, but the momentum picks up once the plot really starts moving. That ending? It’s a shocker. Maybe a little too much, though. I can't quite decide.

Hands down one of the best American films I’ve seen in a while🙂.

Cage finally delivers a performance without all that macho posturing that's been cluttering up his roles lately.
The script is brilliant, the direction stays consistent, and even the supporting cast hits their marks perfectly.

Sure, the movie is incredibly self-indulgent, but the crew actually earned the right to be. You can see it most clearly in the last third of the film, which—as weird as it sounds—is actually a very logical conclusion to everything we just watched. (That is, if you account for the endless pile of tropes Hollywood has been leaning on to compensate for lazy writing lately).
If you ask me, it’s actually a tighter, more cohesive film than "Being John Malkovich".🙂

(And yeah, I’m a "proud" owner of Robert McKee's "Story", even though everyone seems to love making fun of both the book and the author... 😳 )

driftingowl27 said:...which is most obvious in the last third of the film, which—weird as it sounds—is actually a super logical ending. (assuming you ignore all those tired tropes Hollywood has been leaning on lately to cover up bad writing).

Can you give me some actual examples of those tropes from the last third along with how you'd interpret them?
Also, please explain how shitty parts of a script suddenly stop being shitty just because the movie admits they're shitty...

If "The Player" is what Hollywood producers look at to understand their own world, then "Adaptation" is basically the holy grail for Hollywood screenwriters. It’s such an entertaining, unconventional piece of work for this industry. Even though one of the brothers in the movie is a writer obsessed with "high-concept" scripts, this film itself completely avoids that trope. You could almost view the whole thing as an inside joke, which explains why the critics—the ones who actually get how the Hollywood machine grinds along—gave it such a warm reception. Anyway, whatever...

slyrider16 said:Could you give me some specific examples of those jokes from the last third of the film along with how you'd interpret them?
Also, please explain how the crappy parts of the script stop being crappy just because they admit they're crappy.

Kaufman explicitly emphasizes that he’s trying to dodge those classic Hollywood screenwriting clichés used to manufacture romance—you know, sex, drugs, and violence—yet he ends up leaning on all of them in the last third of the film. As the movie winds down, it becomes increasingly obvious to him that he won't be able to pull off the script he originally envisioned. That encounter with McKee is the absolute pivot point for that final act, especially when the guy tells him, "The last third of the film is what matters most; that's what people remember."
Basically, it boils down to the protagonist losing his internal conflict (just remember their chat after the seminar: "A film cannot exist without conflict"). Because he loses that internal struggle, you end up with that messy last third of the film.

Another little meta thing is that the entire movie actually follows the screenwriting principles laid out in detail in McKee's book, even while it's making fun of them.
So, the film is incredibly self-reflective and full of itself, but they aren't even trying to hide it, which is exactly why it's so much fun to watch. 🙂

Your take on the third act is basically what I’m thinking, especially regarding what Kaufman was actually trying to say. It really just comes down to taste, and honestly, people can argue about that forever. 😉 At the end of the day, we're back to the same old question: does a movie stop being bad if it's intentionally bad for a specific reason? It feels like Kaufman just decided to lean into some clichés instead of completely flipping the script in those last 30 minutes to make the whole thing more digestible. I get it, the idea of having a third act like that—after promising us that stuff is garbage and he'd never do it—might look cool on paper... but it was just too much for me. Like, 30 minutes of tongue-in-cheek nonsense, basically saying "look at me doing exactly what I said was crap"... it was a bit much... I was just waiting for the actors to break the fourth wall and start smirking at the audience.
Whatever... thanks to how well-written the first two thirds were and that gorgeous direction throughout—I still walked away feeling pretty good about it.

Let’s just say I absolutely loved the message of this movie, especially with a 😁last third of the film
like that.

driftingowl27 said:Can we just collectively agree for a second that I absolutely loved the message behind a movie with a final third like that? Honestly, how can anyone not be completely floored by it? 😁

It is honestly such a blast watching this constant tug-of-war between two completely different ways of making a movie. On one hand, you have that approach where there's this desperate, almost heavy-handed desire to depict "inner" conflicts and deliver some sort of "deep," profound message—the kind of filmmaking where the creator actually thinks they can change the world through the screen (Charlie). But then, you have the total opposite side, where a film is just pure, unadulterated entertainment—a quick little escape from reality where the characters are driven by nothing more than basic, primal urges like violence and sex (Donald). Isn't that dynamic just incredibly fun to watch? And as for the end—or really, that entire last third of the film—it feels less like a conclusion and more like a pointed statement directed squarely at both the Hollywood industry and the audience at large. 😁 😁

The movie is solid, though I found Malkovich more impressive.
The ending isn't poorly conceived, but the execution just didn't pull me in; it failed to engage me with its irony. I suppose one might need to be an insider to truly catch all the nuances, I don't know.

Regarding the rules of the plot, doesn't Cooper (the man!) end up killing Deux via deus ex machina at the very end?

Some of these points have been made before, but still...

It’s funny how this movie works for the "intellectual elite"—you know, the college crowd and recent grads. They’re totally hooked through the first two-thirds, only to be left feeling totally let down at the end. It feels like these types fall right into Woody Allen’s trap. They spend most of the runtime thinking they're watching some deep "neurotic intellectual comedy"—basically just Woody Allen set on the East Coast. Sure, they probably caught all the postmodern nods and meta-references scattered everywhere. They noticed them, too—because they were pretty blatant—but they only ever processed them as clever little trivia bits or tests of their own cinephile street cred.

The film is high concept, but not in the way most people expect once you hit that final stretch. I want to point out the psychological ego trip involved here. There's this automatic sense of self-congratulation when you think you've "cracked the code." Once we label a film as intellectually demanding and feel like we've successfully deciphered its tricks and passed its tests, it gives us this smug little sense of pride. That's why the disappointment in the last third hits so hard...

On the flip side, the movie simply had to end that way. For the first two-thirds, we’re essentially watching the screenwriter's own sickness and frustration play out. He—the character/writer—refuses to reconcile with his "dark side," which is represented by his twin brother, Donald. Donald is the embodiment of mass appeal, social constructs, and market logic. As long as he keeps fighting that, he’s paralyzed—spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, even sexually. Only when the reconciliation happens—after that meeting with the lecturer—do the brothers finally cooperate, and the story actually starts moving again.

Of course, to make that work, you have to throw a few sacrifices to the Hollywood machine: sex, violence, car chases, all that stuff...

And naturally, the other brother has to die at the end because he’s no longer needed as a foil. Charlie absorbs those traits, undergoes his catharsis, and finally becomes an active participant who finishes the film on his own terms (whereas up until then, his daydreams were completely detached from reality).

The handling of Cooper and Streep is also pretty interesting. Cooper is a total vacuum of a person. He compensates for his complete lack of depth by being obsessively devoted to bizarre hobbies. You can tell he’s empty because he’s constantly switching interests, which just shows he lacks any actual core or deep passion. In that key scene where he's leading Streep through the swamp and gets lost, there’s a moment of pure vulnerability. His carefully constructed image of being this fascinating, confident, eloquent weirdo slips, and he asks her, "So, what do you collect?" His character is hollow, and he uses these odd hobbies to create an illusion of personality. So his question makes perfect sense: What do you collect? What defines you as a person?
Immediately after, he snaps and tells Streep something along the lines of, "You're all the same. You take a man, suck him dry, and toss him aside..." His facade might be charming, but it’s just that—a facade. Eventually, everyone sees how shallow he really is.

Streep is just as empty, honestly, but she tries to solve her existential void with drugs. Just as Cooper dies at the end (effectively cutting off her supply), she "dies" too—exposed as an addict, a killer, and a cheat. Her external persona—all that Einstein and Jesus imagery—crumbles, revealing that underneath, she's dead inside.

And through all this, the soundtrack for the Hollywood party features Folk Implosion! Man, I actually want to go to a party like that... 🙏