Supelice Dreadfully Boring

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

swillsqueal The evolution of a species has much to do with its ability to live in harmony with the Earth. Those plants and animals which don't or can't live in harmony with their environment don't survive.Humans make history. That's one of their adaptive characteristics. Reason evolves out of environments totally dominated by Nature into ones which are symbiotically entwined with Nature. Instinct needs to be tamed a bit by reason in order for humanity to gradually civilize itself--a psychologically repressive venture to be sure, one that spawns many neuroses. But then, as Freud told us in CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, repression of instinct, freedom and the id is necessary to keep civilization together. But is the civilization we've got, the best of all possible worlds? Imagine sitting in an office all day, pushing paper at some ultimately, meaningless desk job when you'd really rather be having sex with the secretarial staff. Repress those thoughts and carry-on... or not, as Puff's father did one day when he decided that he'd had enough of this civilization stuff. That was the day, Puff's father decided to jump up onto his desk, screech his way out of work and become an ape--literally to go back to Nature. "Prison break!" "Human Nature" is funny. On the one hand you have a mild mannered scientist named Dr. Nathan Bronfman who is trying to introduce civilized table manners to white mice within a lab setting and on the other you have a father who has kidnapped his young son from the civilized lap of his mother in order to raise him "Wild Child" style, as an ape in the forests of an overly industrialized America. "Human Nature" is funny because of juxtapositions like these. You see, within this industrialized America there is no room for a dwarf with an IQ of 170, who has a Phd to get any work outside of selling his labour time as a side-show freak, 'flying' an airplane costume in a circus ring, complete with a hairy woman who plays King Kong on the Empire State building (that famous last scene where, it wasn't the airplane who killed Kong, 'it was beauty killed the beast'). Hairy, sexy Lila can't earn a living in any other way than by playing King Kong to a side-show dwarf in airplane costume. Looks can be deceiving and the language of deceit is a large part of what civilized behaviour demands. People can't accept Lila as she is and she knows it. Much as the mythical Tarzan and King Kong, Lila's being violates the decorum of civilization itself. So, she decides to drop out of her side-show wage-slavery, much like Puff's dad and so the ape fest goes until ape meets ape-ess; ape meets civilization; ape-ess meets man and jungle; man meets Lila in hairless disguise and dwarf meets Lila's friend, the beautician with the wickedly snappy electrolysis wand. "Human Nature" is not only great comedy, it's a semi-profound speculative discourse on just what human nature is and how some of that nature is changed and some not changed through the history which humans make, write and remember. Thus, "Human Nature" has more to say to us than films with a similar plot outline e.g., "The Mystery of Kasper Hauser". It's also much funnier than your standard sexual farce. Give "Human Nature" a chance. See it and maybe, uncover some of your own basic instincts. Experience the refreshing wisdom of laughing at yourselves. And, hint, it wouldn't hurt to find a copy of the Kinks'sardonic "Apeman" to listen to before you start the movie.

Sa'ar Vardi If I were to sum up Human Nature in three words, I would say: screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malckovich). Three other words? Direcctor Michelle Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).Give these two a powerful cast with Patricia Arquette, Tim Robbins and Miranda Otto and you've got yourself a winner. Alas, the real star of the film is Rhys Ifans, who plays the bizarre Puff, a modern-day Tarzan who discovers the human race after decades of wild life. This weird and ironic tale also includes a lonely wolf woman, highly intelligent mice and a man pondering about his life right after his death. Trust me, it doesn't get any better than this.

jzappa I am not happy that Human Nature is as underrated as it is. Charlie Kaufman is, bar none, the most brilliant screenwriter in the world. In the world. His other films being contemporary classics, this as well as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind are not considered amongst Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Confessions is in my top 10 favorite movies, and Human Nature does not leave anything to be desired. In any Kaufman script, you will find a tremendously acute portrayal of life through the perspective of a great thinker. Kaufman has more depth, more fixed mental clarity, than most other writers in general. Human Nature, while being the only one of his movies that is a straight comedy, is no different in that respect.It is fantastically entertaining as a comedy, keen as a social observation, and its cast provides performances that are among the most intriguing, sensitive, hilarious and arresting of their careers, subtle or not. Michel Gondry, the director, is pre-Eternal Sunshine, and is perhaps still honing his craft in terms of making a feature-length film. Eternal Sunshine is his masterpiece, but directorially, Human Nature is part of the latter stages of his warm-up period.Human Nature is another one of those buried treasures that flies below the radar, and when people hear of it or see an ad for it, they mistake it for one of the movies that deservedly flies below the radar, waving it off saying, "Well, if it's not that big a hit, then it must not be that good." Don't make the mistake of passing this one up. It is one of the most inventive and intelligently funny comedies you'll ever see.

Lee Eisenberg Looking back on it, "Human Nature" sort of reminds me of "I Shot Andy Warhol", the way we slowly but surely get exposed to a gritty (but somewhat funny) topic. In this case, a man (Rhys Ifans) raised in the wild is getting interviewed by a congressional committee about why he murdered a scientist (Tim Robbins). But overall, the movie poses the question of what separates humans from animals. And after everything that the movie shows, you'll probably agree with what Ifans's character says about everything. As for Robbins's character's setting, it definitely looks like something that would please Jean-Paul Sartre. This movie's probably not for everyone, but I think that it's worth seeing. Also starring Patricia Arquette, Hilary Duff, Peter Dinklage, Mary Kay Place and Robert Forster.Yeah, words are kinda evil...