ADAPTATION

Acclaimed for his first screenplay, an author comes down with a major case of writer's block on his second cinematic project. So, against his better judgment, he seeks help from his gross, absurdly confident twin brother.

(In stores now)

CAST: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jay Tavare, Litefoot, Roger Willie, Jim Beaver, Cara Seymour, Doug Jones, Stephen Tobolowsky, Gary Farmer, Peter Jason, Gregory Itzin, Curtis Hanson

DIRECTOR: Spike Jonze

"... an inspired flight of fancy, an oddly poignant examination of the creative process...Streep, showing her true comic colors, hasn't been this much fun to watch in years...As Laroche, Cooper is a flamboyant revelation...As Charlie, Cage bugs his woebegone eyes in startled panic reminiscent of Gene Wilder. And he's equally funny as the affable Donald...'Adaptation' is a brainy, exuberantly funny rebuke to Hollywood's timid formulas--and proof it doesn't have to be that way." --David Ansen, Newsweek

"Eccentric Hollywood lunacy belches forth with 'Adaptation,' from delirious director Spike Jonze and self-delusional writer Charlie Kaufman, the potty team that spawned 'Being John Malkovich'.... Not exactly an original idea (see Fellini's '8-1/2'), but since when did such daunting hurdles as absence of originality, logic and seriousness of purpose stop screwballs with bankrolls from making bad movies nobody wants to see? It's a Hollywood tradition." ----Rex Reed, The New York Observer

"...the boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year...The multiple ways the film self-referentially doubles back on itself are difficult to describe on the page but immediately accessible and easy to enjoy on screen...a deliciously amusing Streep in the rare part that makes use of her sense of humor...There may be, as Orlean's book informs us, 30,000 varieties of orchids in the world, but in the universe of film there's never been an adaptation quite like the one we have here." --Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times

"The cerebral appeal of 'Being John Malkovich' is reinforced with the visceral vitamins of 'Adaptation'...Nicolas Cage heads a brilliant cast that includes Mr. Cooper and Ms. Streep as the ill-fated lovers lost in the drugged haze of their shared ecstasy over orchids, Brian Cox as the stormy real-life screeenwriting guru Robert McKee, and Tilda Swinton, Cara Seymour, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Judy Greer as four of the most generously and attractively drawn women characters to be found in a too-often-misogynist medium." --Andrew Sarris, The New York Observer

"The filmmakers are expressing their own anger and ambivalence about the movie business, and 'Adaptation,' for most of its length, is a furious act of rebellion...What then envelops Orlean and Laroche and Charlie (who writes himself into the story) is awful nonsense... the movie becomes a complete shambles, and far more desperate than anything conventional filmmakers would fall into...The trouble with experimental comedies is that it's often impossible to figure out how to end them. But at least this one is intricate fun before it blows itself up." --David Denby, The New Yorker

"'Adaptation' is simply brilliant...what it describes isn't peculiar to writers; it's peculiar to humans, if they have an IQ over a grapefruit's and a yearning sense that somehow, somewhere, all this should be better but most of all they should be better...the movie is surely the most creative trick of the year and grimly funny throughout, until the change of tone at the conclusion...as an act of pure audacity, it's got some cojones you wouldn't believe." --Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post

"'Adaptation' is, most obviously, a movie about itself, as gleefully self-referential an exercise in auto-deconstruction as you could wish. But it is also, more deeply, a movie about its own nonexistence--a narrative that confronts both the impossibility and the desperate necessity of storytelling, and that short-circuits our expectations of coherence, plausibility and fidelity to lived reality even as it satisfies them...Some may find the ending rushed, inconclusive or cynical. I thought its lack of easy resolution was proof of the film's haphazard, devil-may-care integrity, and its bow to conventional sentiment a mark of sincerity." --
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"'Adaptation,' is spellbindingly original... a real tour de force, by Nicolas Cage, in two of the slyest and most intuitive performances he's given in years...After a career of tightly controlled performances, Meryl Streep seems totally replenished in this film; maybe the heat and the languor got to her, but she's never been more sensually open than she is here...Like the wild orchid, 'Adaptation' is a marvel of adaptation, entwined with its hothouse environment and yet stunningly unique." --Peter Rainer, New York

"'Adaptation' has so many interwoven strands of reality and fiction that the film itself is like a strange new orchid breed—and one that is frankly intoxicated by its own vapors...the movie wants to have it both ways: to be swooningly romantic and brusquely cynical. And maybe that ambiguity accounts for why I'm not turning cartwheels over 'Adaptation' as energetically as my colleagues." --David Edelstein, Slate