[In the following excerpt, Felperin asserts that Man on the Moon neither explains nor justifies Andy Kaufman's life and career.]

Clearly, if you're going to spend ＄52 million making a movie about a now-obscure comedian from the 70s, you have to believe his life is extraordinary in some way. (It's probably rule number one in the textbook for film-school courses called Advanced Screenwriting: Biopics.) Indeed on paper, Andy Kaufman's life story sounds thrillingly unlikely. Here's an introverted situationist manqué who rose to fame and fortune by singing along to the theme tune from Mighty Mouse, pretending to be a inept refugee and physically assaulting people. As every good biopic protagonist should, he duly died tragically young, of lung cancer at the age of 36. (Allegedly he didn't even smoke, which is in itself pretty funny.)

The problem is that while Kaufman's life story has its required quota of bizarre-yet-true events, it's doomed to failure as mainstream entertainment because Kaufman wasn't terribly likeable as a person. More importantly, he was the master of a comedy style that, as his agent George in the film tells him, is “only funny to two people in the universe.” He means Kaufman and his partner Bob Zmuda, although we should clearly include Man on the Moon's director Milos Forman and star Jim Carrey among the fans of Kaufman's particular brand of wit and whimsy.

It's to their and the film's credit that it only half-heartedly tries to sweeten these acrid pills. Kaufman, uncannily and superbly impersonated by Carrey right down the flaring eyelids and gratingly fey Latka voice, remains in the movie a bit of an arrogant prick, whose psychology the film either audaciously refuses to flesh out—or spinelessly can't because of the risk of litigation from surviving friends and relatives. (This makes Lynne Margulies, Kaufman's wife, no more than a functional straight man in a peasant blouse throughout.) In many ways, Kaufman is kin to the hero of Forman's last film, The People vs. Larry Flynt. Both Kaufman and porn-magnate-turned-first-amendment-champion Flynt are dodgy, deeply flawed characters whom Forman (a Czech refugee who has always revered his adopted country's ideal of self-realisation, no matter how obnoxious the result) delights in heroising. While Kaufman doesn't have the same historical importance as Flynt, he has supporters who champion to this day his ‘subversive’ performances, such as reading The Great Gatsby deadpan on stage for hours—stunts almost always more amusing when described than when observed.

Again you have to give the film credit for not wussing out and for letting Carrey's recreations of Kaufman's turns risk boring us. At a key point, Kaufman asks his transcendental-meditation guru what the secret of comedy is, to which comes the reply: “Silence.” As often as not, this finds a correlative in the sound of no hands clapping and no one laughing at his act, but it's linked to the way Kaufman would push comic timing to the limits of tolerance. In one excellent scene, we see him arguing with the network executives producing his special about exactly how many seconds the show can mimic the vertical-hold fritzing on viewers' televisions before it will set off a nationwide bout of set-banging.

Likewise, the movie tries to encapsulate Kaufman's subversiveness formally in little self-reflexive frills and trimmings. We see Kaufman in a montage working on the set of Taxi, with all its original cast members playing themselves (the years have been more unkind to some than to others), apart from Danny DeVito who is already playing George (he was the show's biggest discovery apart from Kaufman and Christopher Lloyd). Jerry Lawler and David Letterman re-enact a famous fight on the latter's show between Kaufman and Lawler, edited in such a way to maximise the revelation in the next scene that this too was just another pre-planned stunt. Man on the Moon opens with Kaufman telling us he thinks the film is so bad he's decided to cut straight to the end. So the final credits roll before Kaufman comes back to explain that was just to frighten off the people who wouldn't understand it. Unfortunately, there's not as much to understand as Kaufman, Forman, Carrey et al think.