Man on the Moon and Galaxy Quest Reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

Made-for-TV Movies

I’m not sure what is going on in movies these days, but for a long time, we’ve had a trend of film referring to film. Woody Allen is probably the master of this, with his homage to the great Swede Ingmar Bergmann, but it crops up in all kinds of remakes and recyclings. Lately, I’ve noticed a strange trend of movies acknowledging, almost bowing to, television, when I always thought it should be the other way around, that film is the defining medium of the twentieth century, to which television, its troubled bad seed, should kneel.

Take Jerry Springer (please). He has shown up recently playing, in a masterfully imaginative bit of casting, a sleazy talk-show host in Ringmaster and also a sleazy talk-show host (named Jerry Springer) in Austin Powers: The Spy Who… did something he shouldn’t do in a community free-net. Of course, in the past year, we’ve had more additions to the growing list of movie rehashes of television shows, most recently, The Mod Squad, The Avengers, and Wild, Wild West. I don’t understand what anyone expects to do in a two-hour movie that wasn’t done in a zillion hour episodes, except make a zillion dollars. And there is that inexplicable but on-going trend of basing films on Saturday Night Live skits—titles omitted to avoid libel suits.

Now, in this film-crowded holiday season, we’ve had two outstanding films that stand upon their relationships with television, Man on the Moon and Galaxy Quest. I must confess that I have never been much of a television person. Even now, as I watch more television than I ever have, most of my viewing is confined to films. I have the feeling that I am just about the only person in America who never saw Andy Kaufman on Taxi—a television series I don’t remember ever even hearing of until all the hype about Man on the Moon.

So, my comments on Man on the Moon come from a weird perspective. I cannot say whether Jim Carrey (poster-boy for high school drop-outs, by the way) does a convincing impersonation of Kaufman or whether Milos Forman does a convincing evocation of the life and times of Kaufman. I can tell you that Jim Carrey adds another remarkable performance to his growing roster of stellar but strange characterizations. In The Truman Show, he fleshed out an almost fleshless creature, whose life was a construct of big media (in contrast to the goings-on in EdTV, in which big media at best or worst merely reported on Ed’s life); he conveyed the courage of his shallowness. What a strange world, in which Jim Carrey, of all people, is just about our most creative, imaginative, edgy performer! I can also tell you that Milos Forman (perpetrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) once again captures the ambiance of the loony bin we all live in quite well.

Bless them both, and Kaufman too: this is all as it should be, to grant actor and director the freedom to choose any subject matter they wish. But, hey, let’s say someone were to ask me (not that anyone has) whom, among comics, one should make a grand old-fashioned biopic about? I would answer either Lord Buckley (the last comic whose work was not shaped by the electronic media) or Ernie Kovacs (the first comic whose work shaped the electronic media).

There have been many rumblings about this film, many of them dealing with the way Carrey seems almost to channel Kaufman, and people who knew the original say that Carrey has an almost mystical affinity with their old friend. Sorry, folks, no X-Files material here: it’s called talent. It’s not Andy on the screen. It’s Carrey, Jim Carrey. Unfortunately, with a biopic, that’s not enough. A biopic somehow canonizes its subject matter, demanding that the subject be worthy of the film.

The sad truth is, at this point, this biopic falls far short. We don’t see who or what Andy was, or what made Andy Andy, or made Andy tick. Even Courtney Love’s best, fierce effort as girlfriend Lynne Margulies falls flat. We really don’t know that much about an artist from his creations, and we know almost nothing about Kaufman from his, since we never know where Kaufman ended or his creations began—and we don’t even know who creates whom. Of course, now, that is interesting…. And, remember this comes from a guy who twice a week admonishes you to maintain a heart full of noble thoughts, Love and Carrey make truly noble efforts in their portrayals.

The appeal is much more straightforward in Galaxy Quest, maybe because I have seen a few episodes of Star Trek. Once upon a time, there was a gathering of folks with an obsessive interest in a long defunct television show, a science fiction show, to watch old episodes of the show and to get autographs from irascible stars. (Gee, why did I mention Star Trek?)

Somehow, folks from another planet have seen broadcasts of the show and think that they are historical reports. Nesmith/Taggart (Tim Allen) ends up on a space ship based on the space ship on his show, the Enter…, I mean, the Protector. With Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman and the increasingly, deservingly visible Tony Shalhoub, Tim Allen (I’m honestly missing him since Home Improvement went off the air) takes us along, to boldly go where no infinitive-splitting comedy has ever gone before.

In some ways, it is harder to write about a comedy than about a tragedy. We all know and pretty well can agree on what is sad. But, what is funny? That so much demands on culture, personality, even age. So, the best I can do is to say that if this is what you like, then you will like this very much, because this does what it does so very well. And, yes, you get Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver together—now that is imaginative casting.

Keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and for the time being, a smile on your face to keep everyone else guessing! That’s a fabulous way to begin a new year!