The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Directed by Tom Gormican
Written by Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten
Produced by Nicolas Cage, Mike Nilon, Kristin Burr, Kevin Turen
Starring
Nicolas Cage
Pedro Pascal
Sharon Horgan
Tiffany Haddish
Ike Barinholtz
Alessandra Mastronardi
Jacob Scipio
Neil Patrick Harris
Cinematography Nigel Bluck
Edited by Melissa Bretherton
Music by Mark Isham
Production companies Saturn Films, Burr! Productions
Distributed by Lionsgate
By all rights, Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent should be an incomprehensible and incoherent mess, a self-aggrandizing piece of fluff from Nicholas Cage. It starts out as an autobiographical study of an aged and failing Nicholas Cage. (His younger, more successful self shows up to pester him about what a disappointment he has become). Then it’s family drama time with divorced wife and semi-alienated teenage daughter. Then it becomes a mystery, with a reclusive billionaire in Spain wishing to bestow a million bucks on the financially troubled Cage if he’ll just show up at a birthday party and smile and wave for the folks. Then it becomes a crime drama, and then a spy thriller, followed by being a buddy movie, a movie review flick, a High Noon western-style standoff, and then an action adventure movie.
I nearly tuned it out after ten minutes because frankly I find Cage annoying, and until the younger “Nikky” turned up, the movie showed a dire lack of promise. I liked Nikky for much the same reason I liked the eponymous blue unicorn in Happy—he was there to give the asshole a well-deserved spanking.
Nikky doesn’t stay around for long. He’s replaced as Cage’s frenemy by Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal), the aforementioned reclusive billionaire. Javi, it seems, is Cage’s “Number One Fan.” And at first, it looks like it might follow the same path as Misery, Stephen King’s brilliant story of an author entrapped by a psychotic nurse. But the two men bond, mutual affection forming after they learn that they both love The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, a 1920 German psychological horror film. Javi then introduces Cage to what he considers the finest movie of the 21st century, Paddington 2. Cage finds himself overwhelmed by the film, and the two become close friends.
But then some agents, saying they are from the CIA, corner Cage and tell him Javi is a drug kingpin, brutal, vicious, and apparently holding some people for ransom and likely to kill them. And the tone of the movie becomes kaleidoscopic.
No movie should survive such a dog’s vomit of a plot, but not only does the movie survive, but it actually thrives. The friendship obviously takes a major buffeting, including a face off where each intends to kill the other.
The chemistry between Cage and Pascal is amazing, and it is what takes this movie and makes it an endearing watch, fun, and often hilarious. My opinion of Cage as an actor has gone back up.
It didn’t do well at the box office, and I suspect that part of the problem was that it was nearly impossible to market. It’s much better than it sounds, and got an 86 rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Now available on Amazon Prime.