Adaptation. | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Name: Adaptation.
Released: 2002-12-6
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton

Adaptation.

R
1h 55m
2002

90%

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When successful yet insecure screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is hired to adapt a nonfiction book about a fanatical orchid breeder, John Laroche (Chris Cooper), he is completely stumped. Though on the surface the book is about Laroche's flower poaching adventures in the Florida Everglades, it's also about the desire in all of us to experience passion. This longing plagues the book's author, Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), and, Charlie realizes, himself as well. It doesn't help that Charlie's twin brother, Donald (also Nicolas Cage), who has moved in with him, writes and immediately sells a screenplay. When in desperation Charlie decides to use his own dilemma as a framework for the script, he inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events impacting the lives of all the characters.

Director:

Spike Jonze

Producer:

Ed Saxon, Jonathan Demme, Vincent Landay

Writer:

Charlie Kaufman, Donald Kaufman

Cast:

Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

90%

Critics Consensus: Dizzyingly original, the loopy, multi-layered Adaptation is both funny and thought-provoking.

Reviews

Tilt Magazine

Stephen Silver

While not quite as absurd as Being John Malkovich had been, Adaptation was indeed plenty weird. (20th anniversary)

This is, essentially, a long demonstration of why not to give people more money for them to prove a point about how bigger-budget filmmaking is inherently an artistically self-defeating proposition.

This ceaselessly clever, brilliantly mind-bending film taps into the intangible spirit of Orlean's book by involving the viewer in Kaufman's painstaking translation to the screen.

March 2, 2022

FULL REVIEW

World Socialist Web Site

David Walsh

Aside from a few mild swipes at the commercial film industry and New York pseudo-intellectual circles, the film is rather toothless.

A dense picture operating on more than one level, Adaptation. benefits from its warped comic sensibilities and one (make that two) of Cage's final great performances before his career free-fall.

October 19, 2020

FULL REVIEW