I was feeling well enough yesterday to make it out to see the film "Adaptation".

It was made by the same people who made "Being John Malkovich", and I had somewhat similar reactions to both films. They both felt strained and boring at times. They both made me feel like I was watching the product of people who were trying to show me how clever they could be, and were constantly insecure about how clever they could be. The results, while mildly interesting, are not up the level of genius purported by scores of critics around the country.

I wasn't much impressed with Nicholas Cage's dual performance, as himself and his twin, mostly because his twin wasn't believable. Their "dialogue" seemed wooden and contrived, not like two people talking to each other, but like one actor taking turns at reading lines in a script.

The actual story based around "The Orchid Thief" was the most interesting material, and I was grateful to get away from Charlie Kaufmann and spend time down in Florida every chance I got. But the screenplay was too interested in being cute, in interjecting the screenwriter into the process of adapting the book into the screenplay. And at the end it just descended into silliness by converging the "storylines" into what was supposed to be something like a parody. Well, it didn't work. It just fell flat.

Give this one a pass, unless watching Nicholas Cage play an insecure loser who masturbates a lot is really your gig.