In a larger sense, Adaptation is a movie about the simple act of enjoying life -- of really embracing it -- without constantly worrying about what others think.

Surely the most creative trick of the year and grimly funny throughout.

Screenwriting this smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny is a rare species. It's magic.

The notion of meta has never been diddled more mega than in this giddy Möbius strip of a movie, a contrivance so whizzy and clever that even when it tangles at the end, murked like swampy southwestern Florida itself, the stumble has quotation marks around it.

A highly enjoyable failure, a quandary that can't resolve itself.