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

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 13, 2022

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.

| Nov 29, 2022

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.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 2, 2022

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

| Feb 16, 2021

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 19, 2020

There's no good reason why this should work-the picture is a schizzy, self-indulgent mess-but magically, it does.

| Mar 16, 2020

Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman are able to keep Adaptation progressively lucid and amusing through the layered revelations of their postmodern musings.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 1, 2019

Blurs the lines between truth, fiction and bald-faced lies with innovative, breathtaking abandon.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 11, 2018

Adaptation is one of the best films of the year.

| Jan 4, 2018

unique

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 10, 2016

At all times, "Adaptation." carries the thrillingly unpredictable charge of a film writing itself before your eyes. Spike Jonze matches Charlie Kaufman's tumble through time, neuroticism, fact and fiction with depictions of creation at a cellular level.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 25, 2010

Adult stuff only but hilarious and fresh.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 2, 2010

In the wrong hands, the lunacy could have gotten out of control, but Jonze has near-perfect pitch. He never forces the farce, rooting even Kaufman's wildest digressions in real emotions.

| Jul 6, 2010

An impressive follow-up to Being John Malkovich, Adaptation is even more playful, amusing, metanarrative and metaphysical than Jonze's first film, plus it has Nicolas Cage in a dual role and Meryl Streep in one of her wildest turns.

| Original Score: A | Dec 30, 2009

Adaptation would all be insufferably clever-clever were its motivation not so genuine. Instead it is experimental, funny, with a tightly-repressed anger and a desire to dig out truth rather than take refuge in the usual artifice.

| Mar 13, 2009

Some parts of the film are classic subversions of Hollywood convention that are intriguing by themselves but don't quite gel as a whole.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2008

It will confound some and inspire others to riff endlessly on its mysteries.

| Original Score: A | Jul 23, 2007

It's almost mind-numbing to think how Mr. Kaufman could possibly follow-up this gem. I'm just glad I don't have to write it, but I'd be happy to watch what he goes through to create it.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 14, 2007

For two-thirds of its running time the film is close to genius. But there's still no third act.

| Jun 24, 2006

Adaptation could very well be one of the best films of the year -- it truly is a roller coaster ride of pioneering pandemonium, and shouldn't be missed.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2005