Adaptation.

Adaptation. makes the prospect of watching a writer fail to write much more inviting than it sounds. Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman have made a funny, sympathetic comedy about creative panic, with Nicolas Cage playing both Kaufman and his twin, Donald. It is worth seeing for Cage alone, though there is plenty of pleasure in following a story that keeps reconsidering how it should be told. Our reservation is the final stretch, where Kaufman’s determination to take the joke further begins to crowd out the people.

The task is to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, and the difficulty of doing so becomes part of the story. That could be an irritating way of asking us to admire a writer for being stuck. Kaufman is shrewd enough to make his screen counterpart tiresome as well as sympathetic, and Jonze allows his embarrassment to remain funny. The complications stay readable because the central problem is so ordinary: Charlie cannot get on with the work.

Cage makes the brothers distinct without making either seem like a demonstration of his range. As Charlie, he makes self-consciousness exhausting to watch in the right way: even thinking seems to require permission, and each doubt gives him another reason to hesitate. We laughed at Charlie’s discomfort, then felt an unwelcome flicker of recognition. Cage makes the effort of trying to appear at ease painfully clear. Donald lets him be funny without having to be miserable, and the affection between the brothers stops Charlie’s anxiety from becoming merely something to laugh at.

Lance Acord’s cinematography keeps Cage’s embarrassment legible without making every hesitation seem momentous. K.K. Barrett’s production design gives him surroundings that feel ordinary enough for the difficulty of writing to remain the main event. Eric Zumbrunnen’s editing makes the movement between Charlie and his material easy to follow, even when the storytelling grows complicated. Carter Burwell’s music allows us to feel sorry for Charlie without suggesting that being unable to write makes him a tragic figure.

Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper supply a useful change of company as Orlean and John Laroche. Cooper makes obsession look pleasurable, which matters in a film whose central writer has turned thought into such hard labour. Streep gives Orlean a watchfulness that keeps her from serving simply as the person who wrote the book Charlie cannot adapt. Their passages are less involving than the brothers’, however. Jonze never quite makes the orchids as interesting as the man struggling to write about them.

The larger problem arrives when the film starts pressing its cleverness harder. Without describing the later developments, Kaufman and Jonze ask us to accept a shift that can feel like permission to be less careful about the characters. Knowing that the contrivances are deliberate does not make them any more satisfying. Zumbrunnen keeps events moving, yet some of the awkward, affectionate comedy gets hurried aside, and the film becomes less surprising as it grows more emphatic.

Even with that caveat, this is a more welcoming film than its premise suggests. Comedies about filmmaking can become private conversations between people who think their work is everyone’s chief concern. Cage gives this one the recognisable misery of wanting to do something well and being frightened to try. No interest in screenwriting is required. Watch it for the brothers, and allow the orchids to take care of themselves.