Massive Flop

Having watched and enjoyed the episodes of Taxi with Andy Kaufman as Latka I was intrigued when Man on the Moon came out.

But the film, if one is to accept it as a kind of biography on Kaufman, basically revealed him to be a ginormous azz hole.

I didn't mind Kaufman's eccentric behavior or his bizzare comedy style. I think that was just the way he did his act. But the crap he would pull on his own family - pretending to be dying and whatnot, that was just too much. In the film his own family had gotten fed up with his antics and were leary of any new sob story Kaufman came up with. When told of his "death" or "illness" you can see they were just so exhausted with him already.

This whole notion that tricking people can be funny only carries you so far. Sooner or later you're gonna piss people off. And you're gonna piss people off even more when your comedy routine is as lame as Kaufman's evidently was.

The more I watched the film the more I thought that Kaufman might have been suffering from some mental defect.

It seems that he had this idea of what he thought was "funny", and he was so totally convinced that it was "funny" that nobody could get him to see just how unfunny he actually was. On practical application his comedy routines were mostly flacid. Original? I guess. Offbeat humor? Most definitely. But was it really funny..? I guess that depends on who you ask.

His ideas of staged antics during interviews could be very funny if executed well. But Kaufman didn't.

The idea of wrestling females by pretending (or not pretending) to be some chauvanist I can also see as being funny if executed well. And here again Kaufman didn't.

Someone also mentioned Kaufman's ability to command some influence with certain tv shows with incredulity. That I totally agree with. I don't see how it was even possible for someone like Kaufman to get away with some of the crap and cheap theatrics he did. But whatever...

The parts of the film I thought that were really moving was the close friendship between Danny DeVito and Kaufman. It comes through very clearly that these two were such good friends and colleagues. This film might have been a love letter to the late Kaufman by his friends. For that reason alone I would say the film does a nice job at providing an inside look into Kaufman.

This film is for his friends. And that's it. Anybody else is basically outside looking in like someone on this message board already stated.

I would agree with that.

He did appear in one or two disaster in that period (Batman Forever, AV2.... even to a extent Cableguy.....)

I remember not liking Man on the Moon and Truman at first (as it was just not Carrey to me), but both over the years have really grown on me, and after these he got back on track with Me, Myself and Irene & Bruce Almighty etc.... but last decade or so he has lost his way and very little on his CV since 2000-ish I care for (Suspect Dumb and Dumber 2 is one last shot at trying to get the old magic back).

Agreed! Carrey at his best. . . obviously a passionate project for everyone and not a potential "blockbuster". Before this, I didn't much care fr Carrey's juvenile male humor. he he channels Kaufman and renders a brilliant and enigmatic performance. Too bad it lost money (hopefully it made it up later) because it's a brilliant homage! Andy, alive or dead, smiles on this! And most of us only knew "Taxi". I think trying to figure out Andy is akin to trying to deconstruct a poem. It's not ultimately not helpful, and detracts from the real meaning.