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Created Jun 01, 2012 10:29PM PST • Edited Jun 02, 2012 01:27AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Being John Malkovich is more about being Charlie Kaufman than it is about being John Malkovich. The first movie written by Kaufman is also the first directed by Spike Jonze. Those three proceed to use Malkovich’s public persona as a portal into our fascination with fame – in weirdly entertaining fashion, stooping to conquer contemporary conceptions of psychology and sexuality along the way.

   “It’s playing with people!” says one character. Yep.

   Kaufman and Jonze would go on to make a sequel of sorts with Adaptation. See BJM first.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   John Malkovich essays himself inside and out, singly and cloned, as an adult and in boyhood. No it’s not really him, which is what makes it such a great performance. The guy’s a great actor.

   John Cusack delivers one of his better roles, a wimpy puppeteer who finds himself overwhelmed by a supernatural discovery and by the two women in his life. Wimpiness becomes Cusack.

   Cameron Diaz is damn-near unrecognizable as his frumpy wife, who goes from quietly supportive to bizarrely self-actualizing.

   Catherine Keener plays the other-woman, a sexually aggressive opportunist. Thus Keener plays the Diaz role. And vice-versa. It works well.

   Several supporting players deliver pithy performances that keep the movie operating on an elevated plain.

   • Mary Kay Place as a hard-of-hearing secretary who takes misunderstanding to a whole new level.
   • Orson Bean as an executive with odd habits.
   • Charlie Sheen as, well, Charlie Sheen. “Ma-Sheen” – Malkovich calls him.

   Then there are several great cameos.

   • Sean Penn as a gushing Sean Penn.
   • Brad Pitt for just a second.
   • Octavia Spencer as a helpful woman in the elevator. A decade later, Spencer would go on to win an Oscar for The Help.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The film centers on a married couple living out their childhood fantasies, he as a puppeteer, she as an animal lover. More grown kids than real adults, they are easy pickings for the siren song of celebrity fantasy and sexual identity exploration. Why not. Whatever.

    However, its greatest brilliance comes by recreating Malkovich’s fictional childhood, psychological traumas and all.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.4

    Sex through the eyes of another… Bottle that and you’d make a mint.

17. Sex Erotic 3.1

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Profane 2.7

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.7

    Being John Malkovich provides a jaundiced peak into the ethics of the entertainment industry, notwithstanding the movie’s fantasies and surrealism. In particular, a talent agent casually spews forth with virulent misogynistic patter, a phenomena repeated in Kaufman and Jonze’s Adaptation.

    Want more? HBO’s Entourage – and Bill Maher – traffic on the same side of the line. The wrong side. The real war on women comes from DonkeyBrains. Truth.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.5

23. Biological Supernatural 4.0

24. Physical Fantasy 4.6