Rating: 
Summary: Weird or what!
Review: On the weirdness scale, this film comes somewhere between Pi and Eraserhead. It's success is that it's enjoyable - not like some European art-house navel-gazing rubbish - and that although the whole premise of the film is complete nonsense, you don't stop and question that.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the most original films in a long while.
Review: When I rented this DVD I felt kind of foolish. I knew that John Malkovich played John Malkovich and I watched the mock documentary on him before I saw the movie. I didn't know much about the real John Malkovich at the time and I thought the documentary was real. After I saw the movie, I realized it wasn't. However, this brings up a thought of what the movie could have been. It could have told the story of someone who was big at whatever and suddenly changed their whole profession (like the John Horatio Malkovich did). However, this would be how the person's true life story was offering a thought that maybe, just maybe someone did enter a porthole into their head and literally BECOME them...Anyways, BJM is nothing like I expected it to be. Judging by the plot, it does not sound like anything the critics would like much less be nominated for any Oscars. I guess this goes to show that no matter how weird your idea may sound, given the right ingredients, you can make it work.
Rating:
Summary: truly great film making
Review: Spike Jonze did it. he managed to move from the medium of music videos to film and not fail. this film is truly original. the cast is great. it is hilarious and intelligent at the same time and if you haven't seen it go to the store and rent it. you will not regret it.
Rating:
Summary: INTERESTING CONCEPT!
Review: Let me just say that the best part about "being John Malkovich" is John Malkovich. He really makes u believe that he is having the weirdest experience of his "Life". The scene where he enters his own mind is the best<and strangest>. I did not care for the whole lesbian plot and sometimes the entire thing went overboard but i did enjoy the movie overall.
Rating: 
Summary: Alien 3
Review: Just so so! Not that touch compared to alien1 and 2.
Rating: 
Summary: Surrealist film collapses in a mundane second half
Review: I was so looking forward to seeing this film. I agree with a previous review -- it starts off well, but collapses in the second half. Story begins with much surrealism and bizzareness (such as the low offices on the 7 1/2 floor -- wedged between the 7th and 8th floors). Some sharp witty lines. Cameron Diaz "stretches" and takes risks -- still beautiful in her brown contact lens, frizzy wig, and lisp. But the parts of this film are greater than the whole, and despite good scenes, the last half drags into a mundane politically correct story.
Rating:
Summary: This movie is ok at best
Review: Ok I rented this movie wanting to like this movie and buy it. I could just not get myself to like this movie or understand WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS? Cameron Diaz is my favoirte actress and I wanted this movie to be good for that reason alone but I am sorry this movie did not live up to the hype. At least I can say the movie got me thinking, and it was a little cool how they could control someone else's body sorry that is about it.
Rating: 
Summary: A viewer from Germany
Review: This was an interesting concept, but I found it too complicated to follow. I couldn't really figure why a pupeteer actually wanted to be John Malkovitch. I also did not find any of the charactrs particularly sypmatheic. I couldn't figure out most of the plot, maybe I didn't watch it longenough to fugure where it was going. It's probably a very good movie if you like complicated plots. I didn't really like or understand it, so I turned it off.
Rating:
Summary: Bizzarly Hilarious
Review: "Being John Malkovich" most likely would fall into the catagory of "cinema of the absurd." I wasn't expecting this movie to be the sidesplitingly funny picture as it turned out to be. The main theme, of course, is the desire to "puppet" and manipulate other people, but what really made this movie was the little gags in between. Cusack scoffs at a 60 foot Emily Dickenson puppet as an attention seeking gimmick. The boss's revelation that he is 100 plus years old because of "carrot juice." The worker required video explaining the "Legend of the 7 1/2 Floor." People being enlightened by the trivial acts of Malkovich taking a shower or hailing a taxi. And those wonderful shots of people exiting Malkovich's head and plopping out of the sky onto, of all places, the New Jersey Turnpike. Cameron Diaz and John Cusack, two attractive and well known players, are transformed into ugly hags (I didn't know that Cusack played in the movie until after I saw it). That keeps the viewers attention to the characters and away from the actors playing them. The film slows down just a tad towards the end, but overall, its just a funny funny movie.
Rating:
Summary: Stunned silly by the creative audacity
Review: From the opening scenes, I was taken in by this film in a way that I haven't experienced in years... and I wasn't expecting it. No, the movie's not perfect, but the creativity quotient soars over anything else produced last year. What got me the most were the perverse throw-aways that seem to have zipped right over lots of viewers' heads (according to their comments here). I mean, a street performance of 'Abelard & Heloise' with sexually-repressed puppets? Topped only by the brief TV report of a competing puppeteer doing 'The Belle of Amherst' with a building-sized Emily Dickinson! I don't know if I laughed out loud or just sat stunned at the creative audacity. And the 7 1/2 floor conceit was brilliant, as was the portal's exit being at the side of the New Jersey turnpike. I don't recall having seen Catherine Keener onscreen before, but I couldn't keep my eyes off her. Rarely do we get to see an actress make that kind of impression--she's got something that's magic on the screen. (By the way, Keener got the Oscar nomination, not Diaz, as some confused reviewer has stated here.) And Carmen Diaz was perfectly fine (but let's not confuse playing frumpy and wearing a frizzy wig with great acting, as some seem eager to do.) John Cusack was ideally cast, and Malkovich at least gets the 'good sport' award for parodying himself so willingly. And casting former game-show has-been Orson Bean as the old man--another stroke of near-genius. The tale didn't quite take me to Nirvanna, but I sure did enjoy the roller-coaster ride.
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