This is a story about the dude who Wrote BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and how if that movie alone didn’t prove that he was some kind of demented genius, then this one does. HUMAN NATURE is the story of a woman with a hormonal problem causing her whole body to be covered with hair, who lives among the animals until she falls in love with a scientist whose life work involves teaching mice the difference between a salad fork and a regular fork. Together they try to civilize a feral man who grew up in the woods thinking he was an ape.
Sounds completely silly and random, right? But what surprised me, a film expert, was the amount of Substance in there. If this were just a regular, make you laugh kind of comedy it would still be the most original, and funniest, in a long time. There were less than ten people at the showing I went to and I was embarassed because I was laughing harder than anyone else. But believe me, I’m the one that’s right. This movie is fuckin hilarious.
At the same time it’s pretty fuckin sad. Like in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH the characters all think they know what they want, and where they belong, but when they get it it doesn’t make them happy, or it turns around to bite them on the ass. And they all play a sort of relationship musical chairs, switching partners in repeated acts of betrayal that never turn out well for anyone involved. And they all try to get what they want by pretending to be what they think the other person wants them to be, and then they get stuck pretending. Holy jesus this Charlie Kaufman dude must be fucked up, but I’m glad he is able to Write about it. Hey Charlie if you need somebody to talk to about it, I would talk for a little while a guess, if you tell me a couple jokes or something. (more…)