‘This tiny door in my office...it’s a portal. It takes you inside John Malkovich. You see the world through John Malkovich’s eyes, and then after about fifteen minutes you’re spit out in to a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. It’s supernatural, for lack of a better word. I mean, it raises all sort of philosophical type questions, about the nature of self, about the existence of a soul...Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this is?’

What we have here is a sort of celebrity Alice In Wonderland; a place where $200 literally buys your Warholian fifteen minutes. Even if all Malkovich is doing when you visit is crunching toast or ordering towels. And no one can exactly remember what he’s famous for.

Seldom outside the maverick cinema of Terry Gilliam have we seen the likes of Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay acted upon with such intellectual rigour and evident glee. Indeed, that Being John Malkovich is flawed is, joy of joys, the very result of its own fecundity; all thrill rides - even metaphysical ones - reach the end of the line. And no matter how elastic Kaufman’s concept, any linear resolution (and this is a splendid one of which the House of Lords would doubtless not approve) inevitably disappoints. Being John Malkovich is first and foremost high concept entertainment - a tabloid Fantastic Voyage - and is therefore either unable or unwilling to go for broke.

Take that on board though and Jonze’s picture is a delight. It rests on Kaufman’s hilarious dialogue - a genetic cross of Woody Allen and Hal Hartley - and allows Jonze to assemble a starry cast willing to do pretty much anything. And if that means an hirsute Cusack merely revisits a crueller Bullets Over Broadway, then take pause for an all but unrecognisable Cameron Diaz as his animal-loving wife, Lotte - shell-suit, frumpy perm and her best performance to date. Less surprising is seeing simmering indie-fave Catherine Keener as Craig’s manipulative screen vamp partner-in-crime. A delight.

We can but marvel at Malkovich, though. Either he has nerves of steel or an ego the size of Gibraltar, lounging about his swish apartment reciting Chekov, or unctuously enticing a new lover: ‘Shall we to the boudoir?’ Either way, when he travels ‘up his own portal’ and lands in a world where everyone not only knows your name but shares your face, things are never going to be quite the same again.

MTV-wiz Jonze cut his teeth on some of pop video’s most innovative programming, but his picture - for all its leaps into corporate video (the lunatic 7 1/2th floor where Craig lands a filing job: ‘Low overheads!’), TV specials and, at one point, the subtitled mind of Lotte’s pet chimp - is sober in both design and execution. He’s realised he is best off letting remarkable material speak for itself. Screwball comedy? Buñuelist meditation on celebrity? Paranoid fantasy? Media freakshow? Oh yes, Being John Malkovich is all that. And just a little more.