Nicolas Cage is Charlie Kaufman, a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the others'.
Mired in the inertia of Charlie's writer's block, as if the real Kaufman never found his own passion for the material.
– Bruce Westbrook,
Houston Chronicle,
10 Jan 2003
fresh:
Few recent movies have conveyed so forcefully how people can feel shut out by their own lack of passion, how they yearn to end the emptiness.
– Peter Rainer,
New York Magazine/Vulture,
16 Jan 2003
fresh:
It's the sort of movie that keeps reinventing itself and nudging us in the ribs as it does. You'll want to see it soon, because everyone you know will be talking about it.
– Eleanor Ringel Gillespie,
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
27 Apr 2003
fresh:
For two-thirds of its running time the film is close to genius. But there's still no third act.