Summary
An unlikely buddy comedy meets a kind of action rom-com formula as we witness the unbearable fun of Nicolas Cage in a face off with himself.
When the opening shot of a film is the final scene of Con Air, you know you’re in for a ride. After a string of increasingly insane characters, Nicolas Cage plays the most unpredictable one of them all: himself.
It’s no secret that Cage has gone through some rather tumultuous career choices over the last few years. Following his Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas, his string of action hits The Rock, Face/Off and the National Treasure franchise made him a global star. Yet at some point this gave way to lacklustre sequels and direct-to-video fare. As he returns to some more character-centred roles, including the magnificent Pig and the insane Prisoners of the Ghostland, it’s a persona that Cage not only recognises but completely owns.
Which is where director and co-writer Tom Gormican’s film comes in. It opens with Cage at a crossroads, desperately seeking meatier roles that are just out of his grasp. His difficult relationship with his estranged ex-wife Olivia Henson (Sharon Horgan) and daughter (Lily Sheen) is exacerbated by Nicky Cage, an insistent figment of Cage’s imagination who appears to Cage as a Wild at Heart era version of himself. When Cage accepts an offer of $1 million to appear at the birthday of billionaire Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal), he soon finds himself an asset of CIA agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz) who believe Javi is an arms dealer.
Much like the last few decades of Cage’s career, THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT is chaos on wheels. Filled with self-effacing references to countless films, it’s unquestionably made for the fans who never gave up — or at the very least continued to enjoy him ironically. It doesn’t always work, but it hits more often than not with characteristically insane brilliance or brilliantly characteristic insanity.
When it soars, it’s thanks entirely to the interplay between Cage and Pascal. Whether it’s Pascal being a big goofy fan or Cage going undercover in heavy prosthetics, they are both incredibly good sports. There’s an entire sequence with the pair of them high as kites and bonding over a screening of Paddington 2. At these times, it’s almost the best secret rom-com of the year.
As the film becomes the kind of generic action film Cage has been doing to pay the bills, we might fight ourselves wondering where the line between parody and formula might be. Whatever it is, it sure looks like a lot of fun. All I know is that Trisha Yearwood’s ‘How Do I Live Without You’ was playing in the cab on the way home. Life imitates art that’s imitating life about art.
2022 | USA | DIRECTOR: Tom Gormican | WRITERS: Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten | CAST: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Ike Barinholtz, Alessandra Mastronardi, Jacob Scipio, Neil Patrick Harris, Tiffany Haddish | DISTRIBUTOR: Studio Canal (AUS), Lionsgate (US) | RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 21 April 2022 (AUS), 22 April 2022 (USA)
