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Verdict: A dizzying look at the mind of a comic genius, capped by a spectacular lead performance.

Details: Starring Jim Carrey and Courtney Love. Directed by Milos Forman. Rated R for language, nudity and wrestling violence. 1 hour, 58 minutes.

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Review: Exploring the twisted mind of a comic genius, without a map, "Man on the Moon" re-creates the one-of-a-kind career of Andy Kaufman, a performer as interested in making people squirm as making them laugh.

Director Milos Forman ("Amadeus") and his screenwriting team from "The People vs. Larry Flynt" once again hone in on a fascinating real-life figure whose work toyed with freedom of expression while courting public outrage. In the process, they give Jim Carrey the showcase for one of the year's most mesmerizing performances. His impersonation of the late prankish Kaufman is often so pitch-perfect, it's more like channeling than acting.

In the late '70s, Kaufman captured national attention with his "Mighty Mouse" theme-song sing-alongs and dead-on Elvis impressions on "Saturday Night Live." He gained more exposure when his Foreign Man act ("t'ank you veddy much") morphed into the sitcom character Latka on "Taxi." But "Man on the Moon" shows us how Andy never stopped acting (and acting out), even when the cameras were off.

When a comedy-club honcho in the film tells him his routine is like amateur hour, Kaufman counters, "I'm not like everyone else." The truth is, he isn't like anybody else. Applause and laughs are OK, but Kaufman wants something more: "They love me, they hate me, they walk out," he shrugs, as though each of these reactions is valid.

But increasingly — in his inter-gender wrestling matches with women or performances where he bores crowds by reading from "The Great Gatsby" — he strips bare the innate hostility between a comic and his audience. (He succeeds a little too well when the viewers of "Saturday Night Live" overwhelmingly vote to ban him from the show forever.)

Aided in his sociopathic silliness by writer/prankster Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti), Kaufman keeps everyone around him unbalanced, including agent George Shapiro (Danny DeVito), who asks him, "Who are you trying to entertain, the audience or yourself?" Well, both. The problem only escalates with Kaufman's refusal to let anyone (besides Zmuda) in on the joke. He perfects surreal punch lines built to make only two people laugh.

Forman and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski aren't interested in psychoanalyzing Kaufman. They don't try to explain his gifts with standard biopic tropes. Instead, they subject us to his pranks, much like Kaufman's friends who constantly had to second-guess what was real, what was a gag. The movie re-creates the funhouse-mirror atmosphere Kaufman created, in which even a violent physical assault in the wrestling ring can turn out to be an elaborate hoax.

It's no wonder, when Kaufman announces he's ill, that friends and family react with boy-who-cried-wolf disbelief. The film reaches its dizzy climax with Kaufman meeting his match in cosmic clowning: a faith healer who proves that the joke is ultimately on him.

From the opening coda, when he addresses the audience as the Foreign Man and introduces the film ("I wish it were better ... but it is so stupid"), Carrey is a revelation. He captures Kaufman's endless contradictions, his swerves from boyish sweetness to unbottled rage. When not shooting a TV special with guest star Howdy Doody, he's roughhousing with a couple of hookers. As his abusive, lounge singer alter ego Tony Clifton, he's a walking spleen, spilling drinks, chain-smoking, and shrieking at the paying audience to shut up. Carrey doesn't sugarcoat the comic's life; he understands that genius and niceness don't necessarily go hand in hand. Still, he never loses the spark of pleasure that lets us stay fascinated with Kaufman, even at his most extreme.

Forman supports Carrey's performance with vigorous, headlong direction that views Kaufman's life as a pop-culture parade. The script is usually pithy and sharp, with only the occasional tin-eared line. (You may wince when DeVito, as Kaufman's long-suffering agent, says, "You're insane, but you might also be brilliant.") The movie makes some other missteps. Having the original "Taxi" actors, looking worse for wear, play their younger selves is distracting. The film's mystic coda doesn't really make sense, and Courtney Love is a self-conscious washout as Kaufman's feisty girlfriend.

The movie's title comes from an R.E.M. song about the comic, and the Athens band wrote the movie's score. It's minimal, except for the title song and a new one which plays briefly during one scene.

Regardless of how well-made the movie is, Kaufman's life and career may be too arcane a footnote to attract a mainstream crowd. Carrey fans might not want to see him playing another comic's shtick. But adventurous viewers will appreciate not only the actor's performance, but the film's head-spinning examination of a man who blurred the lines between anarchy and amusement.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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