Review of Being John Malkovich (1999) by Scott B — 30 Aug 2012

Short version: Viewing it as a strenuously underplayed psychological horror might excuse the ultimate pointlessness. Also? It was an hour and a half too long.

I appreciate Charlie Kaufman's wide-eyed, yet still grounded, explorations of the human psyche approaching the breaking point (in all his stories), but wandering as far off the beaten path as Being John Malkovich does, then attempting to bring it back to some recognizable semblance of logic and reality took too long and felt forced (saying more about the writer and his plight than the characters'.).

The value of this exercise may be the highly entertaining absurdist vignettes contained throughout.

Postscript.

I'm going on record with saying that Kaufman's Woody Allen-esque propensity for adolescent fascination with/fixation on sex (demonstrated by extraneous/redundant depictions) is as tiresome as a Michael Bay explosigasm flick.