Review of Human Nature (2001) by Danny H — 29 Feb 2008

Seriously? Charlie Kaufman seems to be just trying to make as insane a movie as possible. "Okay," he must have been thinking, "next I'll have this hairy naked woman do a musical number.".

In the words of Donald from Adaptation: "Isn't that fucked up?".

Yes. Yes, it is. But that's kind of the problem of Human Nature, the fact that sometimes it feels like it's being weird for the sake of being weird. Like when they find an ape-man in the woods and teach him to pretend to be Peter Pan. What? The jokes in this movie are spectacularly funny, but it's sort of sad that they take precedence over the drama. Human Nature is undoubtedly Kaufman finding his footing. He's gotten into a nice groove with Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine now, and while this movie is good in its own right -- I mean, come on, it's got Peter Dinklage! As a gun-weilding intellectual! -- it's just not the same. The themes are there, but they're hard to discern and not very well put together.

It's fun, but in a We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge sort of way.