The story goes as follows: a beautiful hirsute blonde, named Lila and played by Arquette, upset by her work experience in a circus' freak show, runs away from society and becomes a famous writer. However, due to sexual urges, she decides to undergo painful (and extremely lengthy) electrolysis on her whole body, to find a sexual partner.During what one can only imagine as extremely tedious and painful epilation sessions, her beautician mentions a screwed-up scientist, who no woman in her right mind could possibly find attractive. For mysterious reasons, Lila is intrigued, met him and falls in love. Unfortunately, electrolysis having not worked its miracles yet, Lila must continue shaving her body regularly. She is keeping her condition a secret and when she moves in with scientist boyfriend Nathan – played by an unbearable Tim Robbins – her secret becomes hard to keep.At this stage, the weird couple runs into a wild ape-man (named Puff) and they decide to take him back to Nathan's lab and train him to behave. It must be noted that the main experiment carried out by Nathan was teaching rats to use the correct fork while eating sitting at a table. Honestly, you cannot make this stuff up…After some idiotic antics involving a slutty lab assistant, Lila gets dumped because her body hair is still not completely gone. So she kidnaps Puff and moves back into the forest, to live naked and happily hereafter with the ape-man.Unfortunately Nathan decides he wants Lila back, despite having moved in with the slutty lab assistant. Tragedy ensues, but honestly who cares? Not a single one of these characters has any lovable (or believable) feature. Starting from the hairy Lila (why would any actress play this part is beyond my understanding), to the sadistic Nathan who wants to teach rats how to use forks, not to mention ape-man Rhys Ifans, afflicted by serious masturbatory problems.The last - but foremost - question I have is the same asked by another reviewer: how does stuff like this get financed? Seriously, who wants to invest in this type of material?

With the talent of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, the idea had enormous potential to be a profound and insightful exploration. But the entire project just fell flat. It was clever in parts, and overall it was different and interesting, but it was by no means a brilliant work of art or a truly meaningful look into human and animal existence. Many of the elements were present, but they never actually came together in any meaningful form. The opening scene wonderfully illustrates what should have been developed throughout the remainder of the film. After the titles roll by, we see a pair of mice (having successfully escaped a predator) walk by a dead human body with no interest or concern. With an odd sort of humor, we can see the difference between human culture and that of the natural world. Clearly, the mice do not care about filing police reports, notifying the press, learning about the deceases family, and all of the other hundreds of mundane things we humans do without thinking twice. Sadly, this sort of clever writing does not carry throughout the rest of the film. In addition, the acting is mediocre, and the characters feel as if they were not fully developed. The odd quarks and bizarre ideas, so much a trademark of Kaufman, are few and far between and seem as though they were merely added as an afterthought in order to make it seem more unique. The basic idea is good, and Kaufman's writing does manage to hold interest, but it is nothing special. The sad part is it had the potential to be a nearly perfect film. Somehow the great talent behind this move did not do nearly as much as they could have. Nonetheless, it is still a very worthwhile film. Kaufman's subtle presentation of ideas about life still manages to provoke thought, and it is a nice break (albeit a small one) from the traditional formula for movies.

'Human Nature' is a completely underrated feature, intelligently written by Charlie Kaufman and soundly directed by Michel Gondry in his feature film debut. 'Human Nature' suffered from high expectations - after 'Being John Malkovich' everybody expected another brain-bending masterpiece, and instead received a subtle, wry and quietly philosophical comedy, open to all kinds of interpretation and featuring beautiful, under-appreciated performances from Patricia Arquette, Tim Robbins and Rhys Ifans.Lila Jute (Patricia Arquette) suffers from a hormonal problem that causes hair to grow all over her body, which first appeared in her pre-teens. Convinced by her mother that she would never get a man, Lila went to live in the woods among the animals, and become a nature writer. The books were successful, and in her new found fame, Lila could afford to become "a hairless lie"; to get electrolysis. Through Louise, who performs the electrolysis, Lila meets Dr. Nathan Bronfman, a bespectacled manners-obsessed virgin and scientist, currently working on a "large sociological project" involving mice. Lila and Nathan are immediately attracted to each other, and are soon living together. One day, on a hike in the woods, the pair discover a human raised by a man who thought he was an ape, completely uncontaminated by civilisation. Nathan decides the man needs to experience civilisation ("Never to know the love of a good woman or appreciate the complex works of Moby Dick or marvel at Monet?"), and decides to 'save' him, by teaching him manners and decorum.What results from the oddball plot is a hilarious and occasionally touching investigation into human nature, that doesn't just come right out and say, "Humans are deceitful and always will be!" or the like, but leaves it up to you to decide.Patricia Arquette gives a sincere performance, and provides the most touching moments in the film. She shows incredible range in this film; from her naive desire to please Nathan by becoming a "real girl", wearing pink, painting her nails and taking up ballet, to becoming a warrior. Lila is vulnerable when she is with Nathan, but she transforms herself (with the help of Louise) and becomes strong and confident.Tim Robbins is convincing as a bordering obsessive compulsive, and shows great comedic timing in the first few scenes with Patricia Arquette. It was an interesting choice to have Tim Robbins talk about his actions in retrospect, and then see him act them out with pure selfishness and inability to control his lusting.Rhys Ifan's performance as Puff is the same standard as Arquette's. He demonstrates a large range; from an 'ape' to the apex of 'refinement'. There is one scene in particular, where footage of Puff as an 'ape' is shown, while the reformed Puff stands calmly as it plays, knowingly, in a very civilised suit.'Human Nature' is a bit of a mixed bag film - it even morphs into a musical for a moment near the beginning, in a song sung by Patricia Arquette herself (what a beautiful, restrained voice!). Sometimes it's surreal, as with the scene I mentioned in the last paragraph. The humour in the film is mostly created by scenes where the flaws of humankind are exposed - our indifference, how we pretend to be something we're not, how we like to separate ourselves from nature even though that's where we came from, before civilisation.I love the open-endedness of this film! It is the best thing about it. Also, I enjoyed Gondry's sneaky references to Bjork's 'Human Behaviour' video clip.

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...