What a strange movie. But, really, what else could we expect from Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonez? It doesn't even open with a scene from the book, it opens with Charlie (played as a balding fat man to perfection by Nicolas Cage) pitching his idea for the script to the lovely Tilda Swinton. Since she is lovely, he's sweating like a pig. I think it took about five or ten minutes for us to even meet the main characters of the book, Susan Orlean and John Laroche.

Usually when I've read the book and seen the movie I like to compare the two, but that's not really possible here. The movie is only tangentially related to the book, and that's only for the first part. The final act (supposedly rewritten by Charlie's fictional twin, Donald) goes completely off the rails, with no similarity to the book, except that the same characters of involved. The music gets faster and more action movie, there are car chases, wrecks, drug use, sex, and everything else about Hollywood Charlie has spent the movie complaining about.

The Orchid Thief was a really good book, exactly the kind of thing I like. Lots of rambling about background subjects, the history of orchid collection, the strange lives of orchid hunters, little details about Florida and Seminole life. As Charlie say, "Great, sprawling, New Yorker stuff." Or, later, when he's frustrated, "Sprawling New Yorker shit."

But I understand why Adaptation is so much different than The Orchid Thief. It would have been very difficult to put all that detail into a movie, it would have had no plot. I kinda wish they had tried, though, because I think only Charlie Kaufman could have done it.

Regardless, the movie is amazing. The acting is great, especially Chris Cooper as John Laroche. It's nearly impossible to believe that he managed to play the trainer in Seabiscuit afterwards, that character is believably thirty or forty years older than this one. Meryl Streep turns in an excellent workman-like performance, but then, she always does. And Nic Cage is good as the twin brother screenwriters Charlie and Donald Kaufman.

I can't wait for the next project from Kaufman and Jonez.