God damn it man, Adaptation was so good for 3/4 of the show but it kills it after they went on and do all the Meryl Steep taking drugs bullshit!

You see, Adaptation is clever because it’s about a real life screen writer writing  about a screen writer writing about a screen writer and all these 3 screen writers are the same person, Charlie Kaufman! So Charlie Kaufman is pretty much writing about himself about writing himself during the time when he really tries to adapt a book in real life. So ultimately, the story is based on a true experience of Charlie Kaufman.

The story starts with Charlie having to adapt this non fiction about flowers and orchid poacher. It’s a book that doesn’t really have any narrative structure. Charlie took the job and wanted to try something ambitious and unconventional, a Hollywood movie about flowers and nothing else because doing that is staying true to the book he is adapting.

He don’t want to fall under the Hollywood cliches of adding unnecessary romance or car chase jest. When his producer told him about shoehorning the two characters appeared in the book and add in some romantic tension between them, Charlie is opposed to the idea because he understand that that’s just Hollywood cliche.

He love the book and want to do justice to the author by not altering the true gist behind the book. The book has no narrative structure, no shoehorned romance, no beginning, no middle and no end. Charlie wanted to present the book as it is, he want to challenge himself as a screenwriter and show that this can work.

This movie’s theme of not circumventing to your Hollywood conventional structure was further fortified by introducing his fictional brother and a screen play lecturer. Both of them embodied the limitations of Hollywood cliches and writers’ boundary. They perpetuate that screen writing must have some boundaries and being unconventional is wrong. They say that a story must have rules and you shouldn’t break them. They say that in order to be a hit, you must have conventional elements and you should restrict your creativity freedom of doing something because it’s “bad”.

This idea of limitation is further perpetuate by his brother, a screen writer wannabe who came up with horrible and generic idea for a movie. The script of his brother shows lots of downfall of a poor movie: ridiculous  plot twist, childish depth, unnecessary motifs, and writers thinking that they are so fucking smart when they have no idea what the fuck they are doing.

It even took a jab on Hollywood producers because it’s shown that the producer likes his brother’s script and think that it can make millions when it’s this piece of crap story that makes no sense. It also criticize the audience because people who read his brother’s script think that this piece of crap is deep and edgy.

These mocking of Hollywood shit is 3/4 of the show. Along with it, there are moments of very real and interesting struggles of a script writers. It also has it good share of self depreciation jokes, honest to god masturbation scenes and a very interesting character study for a low self esteem genius.

All is going well and you would expect that Charlie would live up to his promise and create a revolutionary work about flowers and used a semi autobiography of himself to structure this non narrative with no overblown dramatization or your usual Hollywood shit. It’s going to show that screen writing has no limitations and is able to capture the true reflection of a normal non narrative real life.

Then all things go to hell when the movie shoehorned in drama that makes no sense, a car chase scene, romantic tension, token love interest , a conventional Hollywood like structure, a manipulative, rush and unnecessary sad scene and finally, a lame message about love and growing. All of which are Hollywood’s cliches that our main character is opposed off earlier on the show. Hell, they even make the main character implies that all those are fucking terrible. Here’s the actual movie quote:

“kay. But, I’m saying, it’s like, I don’t want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know… or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean… The book isn’t like that, and life isn’t like that. You know, it just isn’t. And… I feel very strongly about this.

Worst still, it suddenly turns things around and say that all along, his fictional brother is the correct one and Charlie is in the wrong and so he’s changing into something like his brother, which I might emphasize again, is that same brother that embodies what’s so wrong about Hollywood.

3/4 of the show is used to build up his brother as this mocking tool that was used to criticize lousy Hollywood screen writing and during the last minute, the movie tries to make him into a sympathetic character? What the fuck was that? Aren’t that contradicting the message you used 3/4 of the show to build up for?

Not to mention, it also pretty much rubbished a lot of character development because it undermines the insights of some of the characters. In this movie, there are these two characters who is the actual the author and the subject of the book that Charlie is adapting. They shared some really introspective insights on human nature and some amazing shit. But during the final act, without warnings or any build up, the movie makes them the bad guys through some unimaginative and generic means. This resulted in all the clever insights they shared being moot because they are now shallow characters and all those deep insights are a fucking lie.

Watching the final act just feel like the writer don’t know how to end what he started. He build up this huge bricks of potential but ended up crumbles himself because he tried to be too ambitious. Watching the final act is like a slap to your face because it’s telling you that the Hollywood ways of doing thing is the right one and be damn breakthroughs and creativity freedom.

Maybe all this is an allegory of how ambitious and creative screenwriters are forced to follow the Hollywood ways because he needs to feed himself. Maybe it’s a subtle mockery of Hollywood and how all these cliches are fucking terrible so Charlie Kaufman intentionally makes the final act so awful to prove a point.

Yes, that’s it! It must be it! This would be how I interpret this movie now because I truly believe that Charlie Kaufman is better than this. He fucking wrote The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind for godsake! He did the impossible and utilized Jim Carrey in a way that we can take him seriously. He made us forgot that Jim Carrey is this goofball Ace Ventura guy who makes us laugh just by showing his face. God damn it, man, Charlie Kaufman, you are a genius!

Oh, and I love Nic Cage and think that he is really a good actor. He is fun to watch even if he is always in bad movies nowadays.