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'Being John Malkovich' is insane, but brilliant

"Being John Malkovich" cannot be praised enough. Unfortunately, it also cannot be praised in any succinct or easy way. Director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman have created a brilliant, hysterically funny movie that can be described as nothing else but absolutely psychotic.

It begins with a man, Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) who performs adult puppet shows on street corners for money. He lives with his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), and a horde of injured animals including the heroic chimpanzee, Elijah (who as the audience sees in a subtitled monkey flashback, was captured by humans when trying to free his parents from a man-made trap.)

At the urging of Lotte, Craig applies for a paying job on the 7 1/2 floor of a Manhattan skyscraper initially designed for the "vertically challenged" and now used by a filing company. Craig gets the job and goes to work for a 105-year-old man with detailed sexual fantasies who does not hesitate to share.

While on the job one afternoon, Craig discovers a small door in the wall of his office which opens into a dark, dirty tunnel. Out of curiosity, he crawls in and gets sucked down the portal into John Malkovich's head. After viewing life through the actor's eyes for fifteen minutes, Schwartz is spit back out on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.

From here, the movie gets strange.

To summarize any more of the plot would be a shame. Beyond the fact that the entire movie is completely unusual and to ruin its surprises would be a crime, description alone cannot do justice to anything that appears on screen in this film. "Being John Malkovich" is one of those special events that must be experienced for itself.

The biggest surprise of the movie may actually be that John Malkovich is in it. The film Malkovich - distinguished from the real Malkovich by the middle name "Horatio" - is picked on left and right. He is abused and humiliated, and the scenes shot within the deep recesses of his mind suggest that the actor is a truly disturbed person.

But the actor's great sense of humor - which is more than likely the reason he agreed to be in this film - is truly seen when John "Horatio" Malkovich enters his own portal. He spends fifteen minutes in Malkovich world surrounded by Malkovich people who can only say the name "Malkovich" - something that once again must be experienced to be believed.

For a first time feature director and a first time feature screenwriter to create something this unique and fantastic is truly inspiring.

It may be the most overused phrase in movie reviews, but truly, if there is one movie to be seen this year, this is it. "Being John Malkovich" is definitely something to experience.