They say opposites attract, and the biopic-conspiracy thriller-surrealist head trip Confessions of a Dangerous Mind represents an irresistible attraction.  In the Red Corner: the lantern-jawed Positive that is George Clooney, making his directorial debut.  In the Blue Corner: the screen’s greatest Scribe of Psychoanalysis, writer Charlie Kaufman, adapting game show host/producer Chuck Barris’ heavily fictionalized memoir of the same name.  It’s the head quarterback taking the smartest geek under his wing and lighting off for the Territories…

…so why isn’t Confessions of a Dangerous Mind better?  You’d never mistake it for a bad movie; would that all bad movies were as immaculately shot and acidly funny and brilliantly acted as this one.  However, when stacked against its head architects’ seminal works (for Clooney: Michael Clayton, Syriana, Up in the Air, Three Kings, Out of Sight.  For Kaufman: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind feels like a footnote, rather than a whole chapter.

As in the novel, we focus on Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell, in a performance that should have made him a household name), television producer extraordinaire and creator of some of TV’s most risible entertainments, including “The Dating Game,” “The Newlywed Game,” and the infamous “Gong Show,” the latter of which he even hosted.

At least, that’s what Barris wanted you to believe.

According to Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Barris’ true calling was in CIA wetwork; television provided his cover.  You see, whenever “The Dating Game” or “The Newlywed Game” would send some happy couple off to a less-than-happy satellite in the Soviet block, the real program would begin, as Barris would assassinate some imminent threat to national security.  There’s a twisted logic at work: if you can kill American culture with such ease, how much harder would it be to actually kill a person?

The film charts Barris’ long, strange career, juxtaposing his rise to television infamy with the increasingly murky realities of his covert activities.  In one life, his dream girl is the free-spirited Penny Pacino (Drew Barrymore), trying to keep Barris grounded in the midst of so much media hoopla; in another life, he’s lusting after a fellow CIA operative, the enigmatic Patricia Watson (Julia Roberts, relishing the opportunity to play an adult), even as he begins to question which side she’s working for.  Two worlds, with only his handler (Clooney, in a small but effective role) around to tell him which end is up.

All of this is overheated past the point of realistic: think a cross between The Parallax View and Network, and you won’t be far off.  The problem is, it never amounts to much more than “fun,” primarily because the Clooney/Kaufman summit sends the film reaching in different directions.

Barris’ memoir was a kick, to be sure, but it was a kick with some depth.  Here was this Jewish kid from Philadelphia who felt inadequate throughout his early years, only to make it big producing television shows that he and everyone else knew were awful.  The layers of self-loathing and sudden fame are palpable in the novel—Barris becomes famous through questionable means, never sure who to trust or what it all means—and the CIA reveries make literal his internal turmoil.

You can see why the story appealed to Kaufman, who made his career dramatizing the mind’s inner workings through surrealist means (a puppeteer transcending feelings of inadequacy by controlling an Honest-to-God movie star; a machine that can erase painful memories as a way of coping with personal tragedies; a playwright who devotes himself to a real-time, life-size dramatization of his own life).

Clooney, on the other hand, saw a chance to pay homage to his favorite stylistic devices from his favorite 1960’s and 1970’s movies.  We get The Parallax View’s skullduggery crossed with Network’s righteous anger at the media; we also get some stunning one-take camera setups straight from John Frankenheimer and live television; a virtual recreation of a key visual moment from Carnal Knowledge; and a photographic style that changes with the times, starting pastel-sweet in the ‘60s (before Barris joins the CIA and all is well) and turning dark and shadowy in the ‘70s and ‘80s (as the spy world crumbles around him).

It’s a slick flick.  It’s too slick, in fact.  After about an hour of Clooney’s peerless aesthetics, I felt the film dissipating, the human dimension present in both Barris’ book and Kaufman’s original screenplay melting off like excess fat.  I wanted more of the messy emotions—the way Barris tries to substitute sex for love, his pervasive shame—that Kaufman writes so beautifully (and Rockwell acts so wonderfully).  The tension between George Clooney (the stylist) and Charlie Kaufman (the analyst) unnerves Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’s very foundations; these men want the movie to fulfill entirely separate ambitions, resulting in stasis, a gorgeous, noir-tinged fable that tries to substitute humanity with technical virtuosity.  Clooney would go on to greener pastures; so would Kaufman.

Pity they couldn’t have done so together.

Lionsgate has done yeoman’s work preparing an HD transfer for the film—as I alluded to earlier, the image is purposefully slippery and complex, yet the picture maintains sharp texture.  The moody, expressionistic 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track acts as a good companion.

Features have been ported over from the old Miramax DVD.  We get:

• Commentary with Clooney and DP Newton Thomas Sigel
• Twenty-minute behind-the-scenes featurette
• Deleted scenes with director and DP commentary
• Sam Rockwell screen tests
• Recreated “Gong Show” acts
• The Real Chuck Barris featurette

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is nowhere near the Clooney/Kaufman Brain Trust it should be.  Clooney uses style to overwhelm Kaufman’s sensitive and bizarre human story, and the result is visually sumptuous yet emotionally empty.  Still worth a watch, for Sam Rockwell’s lead performance as well as for Clooney’s directorial acumen.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is now available on Blu-ray.  Click HERE for Amazon’s page listing.