Adaptation turns 20 in a week(!!) and Collider's Ron Evangelista has taken a little trip down memory lane for the occasion. It's mostly a recap of the movie, but well worth a read if you feel like a little motivation to watch the flick again. (Or for the first time!)

... the striking self-awareness of not only his film, but of Hollywood's conditions and characteristics is what makes this meta-comedy anchored on some sense of realism. One of meta-cinema's conventions is to inform the audience that what they are watching is a film, while mixing some things that would make the audience still immersed in its fictionality, or lack thereof. In Adaptation, Charlie directly mentions to movie adaptation proponent Valerie Thomas (Tilda Swinton) that he does not want to make it the run-of-the-mill film that turns it into an "ordinary Hollywood thing" (such as the aforementioned flower heist film, turning it into a drug-centered story, etc.), and why it cannot be just a movie about flowers. However, the film becomes a gray area of sorts. It embraces what Kaufman reflexively hesitates to become. (Source)