There's really only one way to put a Charlie Kaufman script up on the screen and get a maximum result, and that's to play it absolutely straight. Which is why Human Nature is arguably the weakest attempt to get inside his head.
The first film to come out after the enormous artistic success of Being John Malkovich, Human Nature is full of great actors who have all done powerful work, but they're mugging the shit out of the story of a man raised as an ape and the hairy woman who loves him, and they're playing up the absurdity, instead of doing the proper thing and just pretending it doesn't even exist.
Although it is Michel Gondry's first feature film, it is still soaked in the whimsy that would be a feature of all his movies, but Gondry doesn't yet have the courage to take it completely seriously, and goes for the wacky, which piles on top of the silliness of the script.
It's arguable that it's just a weak script from Kaufman, and that it's overcooked and trying way too hard to say something profound about the human condition (which doesn't add up to much more than that human beings really like to have sex). But the way it's presented does it few favours, and leaves it with all the substance of a cheap can of over-sugared soda.
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