Adaptation.

2002 Directed by Spike Jonze

From the creator of Being John Malkovich, comes the story about the creator of Being John Malkovich.

A love-lorn script writer grows increasingly desperate in his quest to adapt the book 'The Orchid Thief'.

Nicolas Cage Meryl Streep Chris Cooper Tilda Swinton Cara Seymour Ron Livingston Brian Cox Judy Greer Maggie Gyllenhaal Jay Tavare Jim Beaver Litefoot Doug Jones Gary Farmer Roger Willie Peter Jason Gregory Itzin Curtis Hanson Sandra Lee Gimpel Bob Stephenson Lisa Love Curt Clendenin John Malkovich Catherine Keener John Cusack Donald Dowd

Alternative Titles

El Ladron de Orquideas, Orkide-tyven, The Orchid Thief, El ladrón de orquídeas, Адаптация., 어댑테이션

crime drama comedy

115 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Lucy ★★★★½ 4

@ charlie kaufman: are u ok dude
Review by Karsten Runquist ★★★★★ 4

Whoever told me to add this to the 100 Summer Movies list, thank you. I think I just fell in love with film all over again.
Review by Adam Cook ★★★★½ 24

The December Challenge: Film #110
Adaptation is a self-indulgent, solipsistic and dizzying descent into the troubled craft of creation: specifically the creation of a screenplay adaptation based on an unfilmable non-fiction novel. Just thinking about the film makes my head spin as I try and unravel Charlie Kaufman’s creative processes. Anybody who has ever tried to create art knows how difficult and fraught with self doubt it can be but to turn those personal disappointments into a work of self-reflexive brilliance demonstrates a rare and special talent.
Kaufman takes his own genuine troubles adapting Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief and creates a film that not only captures the essence of the novel but also deconstructs the complexities of the writing…
Review by coffee ★★★★★ 12

kaufman’s the only motherfucker who can turn writers block into a script, dramatize it, make fun of the fact he dramatized it, criticize himself, include meta-contextual commentary on the state of screenwriting in Hollywood all while being insanely hilarious and engaging all in one script
Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 2

A movie about a book to screenplay adaptation of the movie you're watching ........ sheer genius!
Review by Sean Fennessey ★★★★½ 3

No one makes the quiet stuff loud quite like Kaufman. This time, I was struck by how hard but clearly it works to animate the experience of falling into and out of a good book, how certain passages, pages, chapters can dissolve in your hands, while others stop you dead, and off into a daydream. The anxiety of writing—or not writing—is the loud here, but the reading—of Orlean, Laroche, Darwin, McKee, Kaufman's own words—feels most perceptive. I wish Spike could adapt him forever.
Review by Evan Eaton ★★★★★ 12

I’m a failure. I never even finished school. I think about death too much. My brain is a prison. I’m getting fatter. My hair is too ginger in the sun. The 9-5 job I work is mindless. I’m estranged from my family. I’ve had addiction issues for ten years. They’re becoming a part of me. Just when I start to get clean, something sends me into relapse. I’m twenty-four but fifty seems imminent. I have spells of manic depression. Sometimes I get lonely. I wish I had a better life. I get chest pains and migraines, I need glasses because of an astigmatism which makes my left eye abnormally misshaped compared to the right. I write scripts but never finish,…
Review by ksenija ★★★★ 1

meryl streep and chris cooper humming a dial tone together over the phone is a huge quarantine mood
Review by justmiaslife ★★★★

I too hate myself and have existential crises when it comes to my writing, so what can I say? This hits really close to home
Review by Evan ★★★★ 4

So apparently Nicolas Cage can act, and can also be in a movie that's actually really good. You learn new things everyday in the land of cinema.
Review by Matthew Christman ★★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I remember the exact moment in Adaptation when it went from being a great movie to one of the my all time favorites: the low speed car chase between the Kaufmans and Susan Orlean. This was the moment I realized that, after two acts spent carefully creating rich, interesting characters and struggling with the difficulties of creating truthful art, writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze were going to intentionally set fire to the whole construction with an empty Hollywood-style action ending. It's a ballsy move, and it pays off handsomely: not only does it cut the Gordian knot of the how to deal with the tough subject matter, but it's also a point blank indictment of narrative cinema's inherent limitations. Combine that with Nicholas Cage's last known unironically good performance, and you've got the makings of a post-modern triumph that manages to express real emotion while also undermining the Robert McKee screenwriting model.
Review by Tyler 'Llewyn' ★★★★

like if someone made a movie based on your private twitter vent account

Recent reviews

Review by mousetrap26

So fucking meta. A movie about writing a movie but the movie that’s being written is the movie you’re watching? The more you think about it and the more it makes sense, the better it is. How everything the speaker tells Charlie can be applied to the “writing” of the movie. I wish the movie spent more time with those creative elements, the meta-ness of the writing and didn’t spend so much time with the Meryl Streep in the forest crap. I had no interest in her story. All In all a pretty good movie though.
Review by jeves23 ★★★★

The scene between Charlie and Donald in the swamp when they are hiding from Susan and John who are trying to kill them is beautiful and heartbreaking. For as much as Kaufman gets pigeonholed as the guy who writes weird, reality bending films, he’s a writer who also understands and can express great depths of human emotion, especially where it concerns heartache.
Review by MidnightAnthony ★★★★★

Charlie Kaufman you crazy dude
Review by Bryn ★★★★★

I really liked this movie. My favorite thing ever is breaking the fourth wall and even though that doesnt happen it feels really similar. If I was Charlie Kaufman I would have be too scared to make a personal movie like this
Review by graydon_esko ★★★★

Kaufception
In all honesty I did not love the experience of watching this film, but you have to credit the writing for accomplishing as much as it does, even if it did mean 2 hours of Nicolas Cage making me profoundly uncomfortable.
Review by Yohan ★★★★

Definitely not a 5 star for me anymore but I still love this and will stand by it no matter what.
Review by maybefrances ★★★½

nick cage yelling at nick cage about his terrible screenplay is my aesthetic
Review by hcrane554 ★★★★

Meryl Streep AND orchids? I’m in.
Review by AlexD04 ★★★★

Not really sure what to say about this movie. I found parts of it extremely relatable to the point where it was starting to be a bit surreal what I was watching. That knowing there’s something you HAVE to do but feeling the complete drive to do something utterly different. That’s just a slice of it all though. This movie is maybe the most unique film I’ve ever seen and I could write a shit ton about what was great and my thoughts on its themes but I’ll be here for hours. One thing I will say is that I wasn’t huge on the third act. I think I understood what they were going for, I think, but it didn’t…
Review by Agnė Girsaitė ★★★★½

// juk, tikrai, taip gera trokšt
Review by Aldo ★★★½

I liked Stranger than Fiction more
Sue me
Review by high priestess of the church of the seven ★★★★★

Charlie Kaufman is clinically insane in the best possible way.