Being John Malkovich (1999)
Comedy | Drama | Fantasy

Ever want to be someone else? Now you can.

Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a struggling street puppeteer. In order to make some money, Craig takes a job as a filing clerk. One day he accidentally discovers a door…a portal into the brain of John Malkovich (played by John Malkovich)! For 15 minutes, he experiences the ultimate head trip -- HE is being John Malkovich! Then he's dumped onto the New Jersey turnpike! With his beautiful office mate Maxine (Catherine Keener) and his pet-obsessed wife (Cameron Diaz), they hatch a plan to let others into John's brain for just $200 a trip. See what all the critics are talking about.

Storyline: Puppeteer Craig Schwartz and animal lover and pet store clerk Lotte Schwartz are just going through the motions of their marriage. Despite not being able to earn a living solely through puppeteering, Craig loves his profession as it allows him to inhabit the skin of others. He begins to take the ability to inhabit the skin of others to the next level when he is forced to take a job as a file clerk for the off-kilter LesterCorp, located on the five-foot tall 7˝ floor of a Manhattan office building. Behind one of the filing cabinets in his work area, Craig finds a hidden door which he learns is a portal into the mind of John Malkovich, the visit through the portal which lasts fifteen minutes after which the person is spit into a ditch next to the New Jersey Turnpike. Craig is fascinated by the meaning of life associated with this finding. Lotte's trips through the portal make her evaluate her own self. And the confident Maxine Lund, one of Craig's co-workers who he tells about the ... Written by Huggo

User Comment: Inky Pockets (inky.pockets@poo.co.uk) Oxfordshire, England • All hail Spike Jonze for he is a genius. Not content with being the undisputed king of music videos, he's set his sights on full-length-feature-films. One might imagine that the often surreal, always innovative humour of his short music promos might not transfer across to a much longer production – like hell. ‘Being John Malkovich' is a fresh exciting stroke of genius.

John Cusack is Craig Schwartz, an unemployed puppeteer looser guy. In order to earn a living he is forced to find himself a regular job, only it soon becomes apparent that regular it is not. Working as a filing clerk on floor seven and a half, Craig stumbles across a portal into John Malkovich's head. No, really, that's what happens. Anyway, he turns this into a business venture with help from the beautiful Maxine (Catherine Keener), whom he lusts after. Maxine is more interested, however, in his wife, Lotte (Diaz, like you've never seen her before) but only when she's being John Malkovich.

Don't worry if this all sounds a little strange to you, it should do, it's probably the most surreal film ever made. I obviously can't give all the credit for this to director Spike Jonze; Charlie Kaufman is the genius that wrote this insanity. He's the most acutely imaginative and ingenious man of our time.

With such a fantastic cast the acting is of course superb; everyone's brilliant, especially Malkovich himself. Well obviously, you say, he's playing himself – yes, but he's also playing himself being played by an increasingly psychotic puppeteer.

Monkey flash backs and a restaurant full of Malkoviches are highlights of the insanely brilliant and brilliantly insane movie. If you thought that Spike Jonez could never top the Daft Punk talking dog video, you have never been so wrong in your life.
Summary: Insanely brilliant and brilliantly insane.

--- JOYA ---

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