Adaptation.
Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) | Release Date: December 6, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
36
Mixed:
2
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
In a larger sense, Adaptation is a movie about the simple act of enjoying life -- of really embracing it -- without constantly worrying about what others think. Read full review
100
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Surely the most creative trick of the year and grimly funny throughout. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Screenwriting this smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny is a rare species. It's magic. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
It's typical of the nerve, the bravado, the sheer giddy playfulness and sense of fun that characterize what has to be the boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Kaufman strikes just the right balance between playfulness and sincerity, leaping freely from one absurd situation to another before pulling back on the reins. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
What a bewilderingly brilliant and entertaining movie this is. Read full review
100
Washington PostDesson Thomson
May not be the first movie to examine the creative process. But it's the most playfully brilliant. Read full review
100
NewsweekDavid Ansen
An inspired flight of fancy, an oddly poignant examination of the creative process, a rumination on adaptation (orchids to their environment, books to the screen and misfits like Charlie to life) and, in its ultimate irony, a story in which our hero learns a life-altering lesson. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Like no movie before it, Adaptation risks everything -- its cool, its credibility, its very soul -- to expose the horror of making art for the business of entertainment. Read full review
100
The New York TimesDana Stevens
I realize that the fear of contracting writer's block from a fictional character is crazy, but in the brilliantly scrambled, self-consuming world of Adaptation it has a certain plausibility. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
The notion of meta has never been diddled more mega than in this giddy Möbius strip of a movie, a contrivance so whizzy and clever that even when it tangles at the end, murked like swampy southwestern Florida itself, the stumble has quotation marks around it. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
For three-fourths of its journey, Adaptation is, for my money, the movie of the year: an incredibly audacious and original exercise that challenges the conventions of moviemaking and stretches the boundaries of fiction -- almost, but not quite, to the breaking point. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
A highly enjoyable failure, a quandary that can't resolve itself. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Adaptation is hardly profound, but it's one of the most soulful and loopily romantic movies I've seen all year. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Spellbindingly original -- Like the wild orchid, Adaptation is a marvel of adaptation, entwined with its hothouse environment and yet stunningly unique. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Adaptation's success in engaging the audience in the travails of creating a screenplay is extraordinary. Read full review
90
VarietyTodd McCarthy
All but stealing the film is Cooper, who seizes a rare opportunity as an extroverted, rather than buttoned-up, character to bust loose like an uncaged alligator. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Probably the ultimate writers' film, but it's also a brash, daring, and dynamic film -- as delicate as an orchid but as durable and malleable as the species. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Duelling roles are an actor's dream, and Cage takes full advantage. He and that face of his -- hang-dog homely one minute, vibrantly macho the next -- are perfectly cast. So is Streep as the sophisticated Manhattanite drawn into a steamy realm of Southern discomfort. Read full review
88
New York PostJonathan Foreman
The final result, shaped by the brilliantly nimble, pitch-perfect direction of Spike Jonze, and blessed by superb acting, is an extraordinarily clever comedy that falters only in the last 20 minutes. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
There's only one proper Hollywood ending to this story. Next year, Charlie and the surreal "Donald" Kaufman (listed as co-writers in the playful credits) should win twin Oscars for best adapted screenplay. They've earned it -- really. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
It's a testament to Cage's canny performance and Jonze's seamless use of special effects that you believe Charlie and Donald are two entirely different people. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianKim Morgan
You have to experience the thing to understand its simultaneous recklessness and care, its humor and sadness in the name of failure, its playful but dismal take on formulaic Hollywood endings. Read full review
80
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
One of the best movies Hollywood has ever made about itself, a extraordinary meta-narrative that continually questions its own ability to capture human experience, disappointment and uneventful loneliness. It's hilariously funny. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The trouble with experimental comedies is that it's often impossible to figure out how to end them. But at least this one is intricate fun before it blows itself up. [9 December 2002, p. 142]
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Adaptation, like "Being John Malkovich" before it, is far from a well-made film, even on its own flaky terms. But it's a brave, sometimes brilliant one, with a phantasmagoric ending, full of love and hope, that defeats prose description. Never was an adaptation more original.
80
TimeRichard Schickel
The movie ends in a burst of violence that we are unprepared for and don't believe. Maybe it's the film's final joke. It's a miscalculation -- though a calculated one -- but it does not erase one's fond memories of all the odd, deeply humorous behavior that preceded it. Read full review
80
Film ThreatClint Morris
Infinitely impractical, consistently unique and vastly imaginative. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Adaptation is sort of like the mythical Ourabouros mentioned in the screenplay -- the snake that eats its own tail -- or like a series of mirrors repeating their images to infinity. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Wastes amusing beginnings. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
An occasionally maddening and sometimes brilliant motion picture that varies between being insightfully sharp and insufferably self-indulgent. Regardless of whether you appreciate the movie or not, it's likely to stay with you. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
Streep is perfect, as per usual, but the showy orchid role goes to Cage in an Oscar-worthy tour de force. He pours his body into Charlie's slumped frame of mind and creates a character churning with endearing contradictions -- the unforgettable nebbish. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Snags on the fact that neither story depicted -- not Kaufman's and especially not Orlean's -- is enough to sustain more than an incidental interest. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
This is like a Ferris wheel--the ride's enjoyable but you've gone nowhere once it's over. Read full review
70
SlateDavid Edelstein
I'm not turning cartwheels over Adaptation as energetically as my colleagues. Part of me -- and I'm thinking aloud here, I've likely been infected by Kaufman's comic self-consciousness, and also by his meta-comic impulse to draw attention to that self-consciousness, and probably also by his meta-meta-comic impulse to draw attention to drawing attention to his self-consciousness -- that -- that -- Read full review
63
USA TodayMike Clark
Even at its best, Adaptation is one of the movie year's most esoteric outings -- more so than even Paul Thomas Anderson's far superior "Punch-drunk Love." Too smart to ignore but a little too smugly superior to like, this could be a movie that ends up slapping its target audience in the face by shooting itself in the foot. Read full review
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