There is a moment in Man on the Moon when Andy Kaufman the comedian is sitting in a restaurant with George Shapiro, his agent. Shapiro just met Kaufman that night and says to him, "You are insane! But you might also be brilliant." This is the kind of comment that would only occur in a film, but never in real life. It is a character giving the audience direction, telling us how to think. The best films would allow the action and the characters to speak for themselves and allow the audience to reach its own conclusion. At the end of Man on the Moon, I found myself wishing that the movie would tell me more what to think.

It has been a long time since I have been disappointed by a film to the degree that I was with Milos Forman's Man on the Moon. The buzz surrounding this true story of comedian Andy Kaufman, played by similarly wild comedic actor Jim Carrey, was incredibly strong. Word on the street was that Carrey's performance of Kaufman was Oscar-worthy and together with Forman they created a fascinating tale of a misunderstood genius. They didn't. Man on the Moon is one of the most sterile "biographies" I have ever seen. I have rarely spent so much time with one character while learning so little about him. Instead, we are treated to re-creations of many of Kaufman's performances and events, and Carrey does a terrific impersonation without acting for a minute.

The story of Andy Kaufman is indeed an interesting one. An undeniably talented comedian, Kaufman began his career delivering stand-up performances which featured oddly-accented characters and faithful impersonations of Elvis. After being discovered and featured on Saturday Night Live, Kaufman was offered a role as Latka on the hit sitcom "Taxi." For sometime Kaufman's career moved ahead swimmingly. But soon he began acting strangely.

Kaufman would give stage performances during which he would do nothing more than read "The Great Gatsby" aloud. As time moved on, he began challenging women to wrestling matches to prove his theories on male dominance. Before long he found himself in the ring with Jerry Lawler, a pro wrestler from Memphis, an appearance which left Kaufman with a neck brace and an even stranger follow-up appearance on Letterman. It wasn't too long after this that Kaufman died of lung cancer, leaving the world with the question, "Was all of this a big joke, or was Kaufman being serious?"

Man on the Moon does nothing, and I do mean nothing, to answer this question. What it does do is faithfully re-create Kaufman's biggest performances, his wrestling matches, and the occassional appearance of Kaufman's profane alter-ego, lounge-singer Tony Clifton. Carrey looks, talks, and acts exactly as Kaufman did. You can tell he put his heart and soul into doing Kaufman justice.

However, about an hour into the movie came a point when I found myself asking, "Is this really where it's going?" At that point, I had seen a two-minute segment covering Kaufman's childhood, about 50 minutes of re-staging of Kaufman performances, and maybe 8 total minutes of Kaufman as a person, talking with his agent George Shapiro (Danny DeVito) and his friend Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti). Later in the film comes along Courtney Love, her presence wasted as Kaufman's girlfriend. She stands and gapes lovingly at Kaufman for her few minutes of screen time. Any woman could have played this role, and putting Courtney Love in it serves as little more than a distraction.

But at the end of the day the saddest thing about Man on the Moon is that there is absolutely no reason to see it. There are no insights into Kaufman's mind. The film could have at least hypothesized as to whether or not Kaufman was insane or just playing a big trick. No dice. Instead it glosses over his whole career, and never even attempts to prick the skin of this character. As a result, Carrey's performance is reduced to little more than impersonation. There is no dramatic energy to the film. And worst of all, there is so little connection made between the audience and Kaufman the character that when he dies of cancer, we feel very little at all.

There are a thousand other complaints I have about Man on the Moon, but ultimately they are not worth re-counting. If you want to learn the story of Andy Kaufman, watch the E! True Hollywood Story. It has infinitely more insights into the man than this film does.