SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

christopherhodges-91529 This is a typical Charlie Kauffman work and it works really well. A comedy about an ape like woman, a man who has lived in the wild all his life and a psychologist and the intertwined love story. The screwball nature of the film will make it appealing and Kauffman enthusiasts will enjoy it for sure. Michael Gondry, much like Spike Jonze works on the fringes and this is one of his good films.

RavenGlamDVDCollector The trailer of this one was mostly off-putting. It showed possibilities, but Patricia Arquette in that awful wig? I watched it again and again, and focused on the positive, but the uncertainty made me wait (+ the option I found was hellishly expensive) but the research on IMDb showed a considerable interest in this movie, including the kid on the board post whose Mommy forbid seeing it.A more affordable British option became available, but I still kept holding back, especially after GOODBYE, LOVER, an earlier DVD purchase, drew a less-than-thrilled-with-Patricia response. Yet, it is a RavenGlam idiom here in ElectricLadyLand, "she's an Arquette", yes, glamor runs in that bloodline. So, I finally took the chance. When it came to watching, I was just prepared, do not expect too much, you are bound to be disappointed.I was very quickly nicely surprised. This was very well done. The al fresco nudist scene with Patricia singing that bit about all the hair and the cuddly old bear while the forest denizens watch on, that is just movie magic, admittedly very, very off-beat, I am a total purist at heart and wouldn't want the cast of 90210 or MELROSE PLACE to sprout hair, hair everywhere, but this sequence was so innocent and charming...Okay, there are bits in the movie that needed a rethink. And Nathan was so dull, why he had Gabrielle interested in him as well, I fail to understand. She wasn't a gold-digger, he surely wasn't even rich, what did he have to offer? His nice personality??? Miranda Otto is another very big plus point of this movie. She played her sexy faux French chick to perfection. Okay, I fail to understand why she and Puff unites at the end, she is supposed to be a bad girl. If it's for sex, it's not for some devious reason. Anyway, love Miranda's bedroom lair and her nice long legs. Gee, for those of you who misunderstood, Gabrielle knew exactly how hot she was, and just pretended to feel ordinary to draw a deluge of compliments from Nathan.Loved her whirlwind clean-up act. Sounds only, but imagine it as a cartoon.Movie starts off great, fails to maintain that level. It is grossly uneven. But I am very glad I bought it. With all its faults, it is well worth watching. I'd just not have brought death into a comedic plot. Takes the fun out of it.Oh, and I'm pretty sure it is not raven nature to fly into trees. Those two mice were too darling for this world, they could never be allowed out on their own.

frankvandal With the talent of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, the idea had enormous potential to be a profound and insightful exploration. But the entire project just fell flat. It was clever in parts, and overall it was different and interesting, but it was by no means a brilliant work of art or a truly meaningful look into human and animal existence. Many of the elements were present, but they never actually came together in any meaningful form. The opening scene wonderfully illustrates what should have been developed throughout the remainder of the film. After the titles roll by, we see a pair of mice (having successfully escaped a predator) walk by a dead human body with no interest or concern. With an odd sort of humor, we can see the difference between human culture and that of the natural world. Clearly, the mice do not care about filing police reports, notifying the press, learning about the deceases family, and all of the other hundreds of mundane things we humans do without thinking twice. Sadly, this sort of clever writing does not carry throughout the rest of the film. In addition, the acting is mediocre, and the characters feel as if they were not fully developed. The odd quarks and bizarre ideas, so much a trademark of Kaufman, are few and far between and seem as though they were merely added as an afterthought in order to make it seem more unique. The basic idea is good, and Kaufman's writing does manage to hold interest, but it is nothing special. The sad part is it had the potential to be a nearly perfect film. Somehow the great talent behind this move did not do nearly as much as they could have. Nonetheless, it is still a very worthwhile film. Kaufman's subtle presentation of ideas about life still manages to provoke thought, and it is a nice break (albeit a small one) from the traditional formula for movies.

MisterWhiplash Unlike the other works from Charlie Kaufman- Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- Human Nature doesn't leave the sort of unbelievable cinematic residue that stays for days and week and even years afterward. It's a work that is low-key even as it's insanely zany in spurts and totally tuned into a comedic frequency that only works for the casual viewer sometimes. But even a lesser work from the likes of Michel Gondry and Kaufman registers higher in a way that comedies with lower ambitions couldn't dream to aspire to. It has some conventionality to it, with its love triangle between Dr. Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins), Lila (Patricia Arquette), and Gabrielle (Miranda Otto) that ends up tearing apart the characters to question who they are (aside from Gabrielle). Yet that's not really totally at concern, though it probably has somewhere to figure into the whole idea of what makes for truth in human nature. One might argue, after seeing the film, it has something to do with individualism...actually, if we go by Kaufman's interpretation, it has to do with orgasms.Told in quasi-Rashomon style (with the law and the afterlife, as in Rashomon, figuring into Human Nature as well), Bronfman has an interest in teaching mice table manners when we first meet him (one of the film's funniest recurring images/scenes), and gets set up on a date with Lila, who's a writer of nature stories (from personal experience, due to an abnormal hair condition as a child she decides to live in the wild after an unsuccessful stint at a side-show). She decides to conform for him, hiding the fact that she's a hairy "ape" from the wild, as he hides his compulsion for manners and proper behavior. Enter in "Puff" (Rhys Ifans, in one of his funniest roles/performances yet), who gets that name by Gabrielle, Nathan's assistant at work, and an adoptive mother to Nathan being adoptive father. Now it will be time to really go further with Nathan's research- to teach one who's been in the wild always to be a proper, educated human. This proves to be a challenge, as Puff can't resist the urge to hump whenever aroused, and is around the sexual explosion that erupts between Nathan and Gabrielle- the love triangle that unfolds that may spell as foreshadowing for Puff later on in the story...And so on. You might get just the slight sense- scratch that, overwhelming impression- that this is not you're average tale of what it means to be an ape-man and become 'civlized'. It's a whacked-out comedy of manners and sexuality, where one's own soul becomes more of a question then what is really meant to be proper or what not. Actually, there is some interest in how Nathan figures into this as well- he's the least human of all, at least for the most part, as he loses himself in his pursuit of science, with Lila losing hers alongside. So Kaufman does end up working some very interesting characters here, and the situations and little notes that pop up are about as irreverent as he's ever done. The problem is it ends up un-even too: little things are left un-checked, as to Gabrielle possibly not being really French (it's put in as a possible note of her being untruthful as well, but it's never addressed again, or her motives of anything, even as Otto plays the character well enough), or the psychology that emerges from Puff himself. Does he just want to "have some of that" as he says to the committee, or does he get too adjusted to his surroundings.However what holes or problems might lie in the screenplay, there's no denying the bright strengths just in general working in Human Nature. Who would think up such a strange concept, leaping bravely off of Truffaut's Wild Child into a sort of common theme in Kaufman's work so far? Kaufman would, especially as it's part of the need to feel like someone else, or what it must be to try to be something one can't really be through insecurities and troubles in dealing with reality and surroundings. I would imagine that Kaufman had a lot of fun churning this one out, possibly even thinking it might be improbable it might even get made. Luckily, it's directed by Gondry with his mix of fantastical visual energy and a real sense of humility with the absurd material. It doesn't have the same power as in his best work either, but as a first feature film it could've been a lesser endeavor too. Human Nature ends on an (ironically?) unique ending, where Puff does what we'd expect him to do, but then maybe not, and it caps off what has led up to it- a weird little ball of comic-curiosity that should please fans of Robbins (very funny in his awkward doctor character), Arquette, and especially Ifans.