'Adaptation' is a movie with in a movie having two true stories. One is New Yorker writer Susan Orlean's nonfiction bestseller 'The orchid thief', about a crazy orchid breeder in Florida. The other is screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's own struggle to turn the book into a decent screenplay.

During the filming of 'Being John Malkovich' writer Kaufman took a contract to do a screen adaptation of 'The Orchid Thief', but he couldn't figure out how to make the script work. After fiddling around with it for a while, he got totally immersed in the process and was in despair. He decided to take a chance and solve the problem by putting himself into his screenplay.

Role of Charlie Kaufman is played by Nicolas Cage. This fictionalized Charlie has a twin brother Donald (also played by Cage), who is exactly the opposite. Charlie is shy and has low self- esteem and he couldn't even kiss Amelia (Cara Seymour), the woman he loves. Donald is an easy going, self confident charmer and he has a way with the ladies. Donald who is also a budding screenwriter takes Robert McKee's (Brian Cox) famous Hollywood screenwriting course, learns all the ropes to make a commercial success of a screenplay. He sells his screenplay, a conventional thriller easily.

Desperate Charlie decides to get some advice from Mr. Robert McKee. To his astonishment the advice was " Your characters must change" says Mr. McKee," and change must come to them". The spell is broken and Charlie who always wanted to write nothing but very simple movie scripts, starts to write a script for a film that has everything in it -drugs, sex, violence and you name it.

In the parallel plot, Meryl Streep plays the book's writer Susan Orlean who is at cross roads in her career and Chris Cooper plays John Laroche, the crazy poacher of rare orchids. Susan, a writer for 'The New Yorker' is send to do a story on John. The movie keeps flashing between the stories.

The movie demonstrates the real talent of real Charlie Kaufman, that he can portray not only other people's life into a film but even his own into the story he tells with wit and sensitivity. This film revolutionizes the art of screenwriting. It gives an insight to the insecurities and perils of a writer. Nicolas Cage gives an excellent performance as Charlie as well as Donald. Jonze as a director is graceful and he has proved again that he can put every word of the screenwriter into precise action in the film. Meryl Streep as the intelligent but confused Susan and Chris Cooper as John Laroche deserve each other and does a wonderful job. Brian Cox as Robert McKnee and Ron Livingston as Kaufmans agent give good performances.

From this film there is an excellent lesson to be learned by all the screenwriters as a recipe for a successful film, as advised by Mr. Robert McKee "A script without conflict or crisis will bore an audience to tears". We rate this movie VERY GOOD.