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He tells this experience to Maxine (Catherine Keener), a beautiful but cynical office worker he's smitten with, even though she keeps him at arm's length. Maxine begins a business with Cusack, selling quality time in Malkovich's head for $200 a pop. This late-night business must be explained to Diaz, so she is brought into the plot, which takes many further twists.
How others will see it. This comedy was an immediate hit with hip film fans. It is funny, especially to the cynically inclined, and it was original: a love triangle that principally occurs through the physical actions of a fourth party. Those who miss the beginning of the movie will have trouble following it, and the less jaded among us will be mystified by it.
How I felt about it. The first half of the film is so preposterous, and deliberately so, that it is stocked with entertaining moments. One example is a brief corporate training video featuring a circa-1820 sea captain who meets a midget, falls in love with her, and decides to build a circa-1920 office tower that includes a floor with a four-foot ceiling.
Cusack adapts promptly to corporate life, because he has a motivation to be there: he's trying to seduce a hottie co-worker, who regards him merely as a victim for her sadistic wit. At this early point in the film, we have had snappy dialogue, interesting characters, and a measure of suspense. Principally, will Cusack score with Maxine?
The nonsense involving a portal into John Malkovich's mind is the centerpiece of the movie, but it's also it's major weakness. Once the portal is introduced, the characters mutate, and the movie begins to lose its way.
Hard-bitten Maxine, the only major cast member with no desire to enter Malkovich's head, is at first motivated to make money off the portal. That's fitting for her character, but then she decides to use the portal to have virtual sex with Diaz and Cusack through Malkovich. This doesn't suit her character, and it gets worse. She marries Malkovich to be with Cusack, who's possessing him, then for no reason decides to cut Cusack via Malkovich off completely to be with Diaz.
Diaz, on the other hand, changes from kindly and pet-centric into a self-obsessed woman who thinks she's really a man. Then she wants a lesbian relationship with Maxine, then she wants to enter Malkovich permanently, then she wants Maxine again. And cut off Cusack completely. Meanwhile, Orson Bean morphs from a manager driven by sexual cravings into a kindly spokesman for a secret community of elderly people seeking to enter Malkovich's head, which will enable them to live forever.
The mood of the film changes less than the characters, but it becomes less of a comedy and more of a sci-fi thriller. And it furthers the notion that all pretty women secretly want to pair up, while men desire eternal life even if it means assuming another's identity and body.