Nicolas Cage rises to the Unbearable Weight of fan expectations
Cage embraces—and surpasses—the viral meme version of himself in this meta-movie celebration of his 'nouveau shamanic' acting style
Film Reviews Nicolas Cage
In The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, Nicolas Cage makes out with himself. Literally.
Not only will this tell you if you’re the target audience for The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, but it should be more than enough to prompt you to pre-order your ticket before you finish reading this sentence. This is a movie for the person who bookmarks YouTube clips of Cage yelling the alphabet in Vampire’s Kiss. Who drops “NOT THE BEES!” into conversations whether or not it’s relevant. And who at least thought about ordering pajamas designed with Cage’s face stretched across them when a website offered them online. You will feel seen.
Considering how many mediocre films fans have sat through in order to be considered a Cage completist, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent is a well-deserved reward. Pay The Ghost might refute the actor’s claim that he’s never phoned in a performance, and Left Behind might live up to its title, but director Tom Gormican and co-writer and executive producer Kevin Etten deliver the ultimate Cage experience, with the possible exception of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which may never be topped. This is the best possible version of one of those direct-to-video films, and everything a fan could want from Cage.
How this might play to more casual Cage fans who know him mainly from stuff like Leaving Las Vegas and Moonstruck remains to be seen. But as a meta-commentary on fandom in general, it’s refreshing to see a superfan who looks more like Pedro Pascal than The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy, especially in a world where so-called “geek” franchises like Star Wars and Marvel are beloved by a huge cross-section of society.
The real Nicolas Cage is reportedly quite shy. The Cage who appears in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent is loud, loquacious, and narcissistic, with a career in decline and relationships with wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan) and daughter Addy (Lily Sheen) that are estranged. Sheen, the child of Michael Sheen and Kate Beckinsale, has real-world experience as a celebrity daughter, but creating this fictional family alleviates potential copyright problems for Cage’s real one, since his own child is named after DC’s First Son of Krypton, Kal-El.
Depressed, drunk, and on the verge of quitting acting, Cage accepts a million-dollar offer to attend a wealthy fan’s birthday party in Mallorca. Javi (Pedro Pascal) hopes Cage will like his screenplay and make a movie with him, but their fast friendship hits a snag when the superfan turns out to be the head of a major crime family, complete with a kidnapped girl stashed in his fortresslike estate. Two CIA agents, played by Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz (reuniting from The Oath), use Cage’s paternal guilt to pressure him into spying for them.
As a pretext to spy longer, Cage convinces Javi to collaborate on a new script, which unsurprisingly mirrors the movie that viewers are watching. It’s an adept riff on Adaptation, especially since the actor once again plays two parts—the “present-day” Cage and young “Nicky” from his Wild At Heart era, appearing as a hallucination to admonish his present-day self.
Gormican and Etten’s knowledge of Cage is detailed enough to repeatedly drop phrases through the film like “nouveau shamanic,” a term he has used in real life to describe his acting technique. Naturally, they prefer twitchy, shouty Cage over his more subdued alter egos, leaving Pascal to handle the more human moments. In fact, Javi proves so lovable that the filmmakers arguably give him a pass for some of his poor behavior, but they follow it with a twist that justifies the choice.
If the movie were just meme-able moments, it might run out of steam, even with Cage delivering them practically nonstop. Thankfully, there’s an actual plot, which allows everyone else (and the film as a whole) to spoof less Cage-specific tropes. At the same time, in idolizing Cage’s nouveau-shamanic style—such as it is—the movie even makes time to poke fun at method acting, simultaneously throwing a bit of shade at actors like Jared Leto who swear by the practice.
Giving Cage a scolding, Irish ex-wife is a great choice, and Horgan not only serves up righteous realness but occasionally out-swears him with a well-placed “fookin’ Jaysus!” That said, none of his co-stars can top his inevitably insta-viral signature line “Nic FUCKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING Cage,” which he screams with exactly as much unique, unforgettable intensity as you’d expect.
Once again, that’s probably all that you need to hear. But even if metatextual storytelling sometimes can feel a bit too much like filmmakers chasing their own tails, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent offers viewers a unique and welcome alternative: Nicolas Cage slipping himself a little tongue.
68 Comments
Not the first time he’s done meta! He also reads a book of poetry called “Rememberances by Nick Cage” in the sweaty erotic thriller “Between Worlds.”It’s a weird one.
So glad to see this might actually be good. Pedro Pascal playing off of Cage-doing-an-impression-of-Cage? I’m ready to … PISSSSSSSSS…BLOOOOOOOOOD!!!!
Pascal is so good in Narcos (a decidedly un-fun role) that seeing him as a jovial freewheeling criminal is going to be a neat departure.
Pascal seems to mirror Timothy Olyphant, in that he’s a huge goof that nevertheless plays a lot of fairly serious characters, nearly to the point of typecasting. Both of them are probably funnier than most currently working comic actors.
The last thing I saw Pascal in was Wonder Woman 1984, where he was off-the-wall gonzo. He manages to sell the line “I’m a pretty messed up loser guy”. It was not a good movie, but Pascal’s goofiness made it compellingly bad.
I feel like you’re watching totally different Pascal roles than I am. The guy rose to prominence playing a sarcastic libertine who loved orgies on Game of Thrones and has had prominent roles since then as a cowboy spy with a lasso and a goofy businessman granting people wishes.
Pascal as Oberyn Martell was a deadly serious dude. It got him killed. He was a lot of other things too, but having a lot of sex and quipping doesn’t change that. He has since gone on to play some sort of drug lord on Narcos (I actually haven’t seen the show, but it doesn’t look very playful) and a masked stoic on The Mandalorian. Of course he’s done other stuff, but is he actually known for them? I had forgotten he was even in Kingsmen 2.I mean, Olyphant is great in The Santa Clarita Diet, and he played a funny version of himself on The Good Place too. But to literally everyone in the world, he’s either Raylan Givens or Seth Bullock, except maybe for a few Millenials who still remember The Girl Next Door. I just think that most people also recognize Pascal in roles that do not tend to emphasize his comedic abilities.
Actually, he played a DEA agent in Narcos, not a drug lord. Also, for comedy I recommend Blood Sucking Bastards. Pedro as a vampire in the corporate world is a hoot.
To be sure, Olyphant was always pretty low-key hilarious on Justified, a show which allowed him to balance quite well between the heavier dramatic-stuff and the dry, humorous moments. Raylan’s definitely a lighter-gravity character than Seth Bullock.
Pascal reminds me of Enrico Colantoni— a relentlessly overqualified actor who always gives 100% to even the stupidest role, and unsurprisingly sounds like he’s a really nice guy in real life
He was recently in that awful the Bubble movie from Judd Apatow, and he was the best part about it
I knew from the moment he showed up on Game of Thrones that he was going to be special. Yep, he sure is. He can do just about anything.
Why didn’t they hire Danny Pudi?Was he too much of a SEXY CAAAAT for the movie?
S’true, I should almost consider boycotting this if Pudi isn’t involved in some way
If you were to hang out with Nicolas Cage, what would you call him? Nic? Nicolas? Mr. Cage?It’d be wild to hang with him for a day. Think how cool it would be to get wasted with him and then order Dominos? I bet he tips great. Delivery people probably tell stories of such an occasion.You’re 7 hours in on your day. The day’s kind of shitty and your car is making some unusual noise, probably costing ya money you ain’t got. You go to the door and Nicolas Cage answers it. I bet he gets those sweet lava cakes and some Sprite.
Nicky.
Nico.
Dude, Nico, man. Member that time you removed your face and wore another guy’s face? Shit’s crazy, right?I can’t even imagine what it must be like to hang with Nic Cage. Like would we watch The Core on tv and go buy chips at the store? I mean, you gotta defer all your comments, right? Like how do follow up Nic Cage? He goes in and says “twenty on pump seven,” you gotta just nod and go with it. Maybe point at the clerk and say “yeah.”
Mr. Coppola.
I want to be some part of this story. I’ll settle for being the bottle of Sprite.
Definitely going with Mr. Cage until he goes “Call me _______”. I feel like overly casual with someone you just met can kinda seem like an asshole move.
I guess it would also depend on how you were introduced. Like if he stuck out his hand and was like, “hey, I’m Nic,” then you could probably call him Nic. But it also raises the question: does Nicolas Cage need to introduce himself?Gotta be sort of wild, right? Like you’re Nic Cage. In the back of your mind you gotta be thinking “do I need to announce who I am? People know me, right?”I don’t know. Being a celebrity has got to be weird.
If his AMA is any indication, he’d probably be the “Hi, I’m Nic” sort. Like, he wouldn’t need to introduce himself but he’d do it anyways to be polite.
Just a Coppola guys hanging out…
The ironic thing about the press junket for this movie is that the real Nic Cage is now way more compelling to me than the fictionalized meme-spouting version of him.
did you read the gq cover story? it was fantastic.
Seconded on the GQ interview being fantastic. So much as that I needed to put it down halfway through and finish it a few days later. Given the increasing rate of famous figures being revealed as massive jerks at best and outright monstrous at worst, I don’t let myself feel real feelings about them as I have no experience with them as real people. Regardless of how charming, interesting, decent, etc., they might seem, I can only experience them via a expansive filters of varying degrees of artifice. Reading that Cage GQ interview, I became suddenly aware I was slipping into an unhealthy (for me) and unfair (to Cage) parasocial sense of “relatability”. Especially the parts where he talks about his family. (TMI, I know. Sorry.)
i’m not entirely sure ‘more casual Cage fans who know him mainly from stuff like Leaving Las Vegas and Moonstruck’ exist in 2022. wouldn’t the ‘casual fans’ ONLY know him from the memes and not 30 year old movies?
Would the memes eventually lead to those movies being seen though? I have no real reason to see “The Family Man,” but this video makes it seem pretty compelling.
It was a gotta-keep-the-lights-on movie. The character starts out as an asshole, gets a chance to do better, then ends up back in his old life with a “sorry, you can’t have that.” If you just want to complete the Cage oeuvre, it might be worth your time.
Well hello!I’m in my mid-40’s and grew up on Raising Arizona and Moonstruck, got convinced that Cage was an elite actor with Leaving Las Vegas, went through my douchebag adolescence era with shit like Con Air and Face Off, and then stopped paying attention somewhere around or after Ghost Rider or Wicker Man. I know virtually nothing about the dozens of meme movies he’s done over the past ten or fifteen years.
Raising Arizona is my all-time favorite movie, in no small part to Cage’s performance. He has amazing comic timing and delivery when he chooses (his Bad Lieutenant a prime example). But I don’t know how many casual fans under 30 he could possibly have based upon his work the last 20 years. Meanwhile if you know him from Moonstruck, you knew his years as a pretty big star.
Oh, Moonstruck. His intro scene in the basement of the bakery is fantastic. And the ending scene round the breakfast table is just wonderful.As is everything in between. Top five all-time movie for me. Cher and Cage are all that’s left from the great principal cast. If you’ve never seen it, it still holds up! Get thee to a screenery.
I’m in the same boat.That said, Pig is wonderful, and Mandy is pretty great too.
right so i wouldn’t describe you as a ‘casual fan who knows him mainly from stuff like leaving las vegas and moonstruck’
Face-Off and a bit-part in Fast times at Ridgemont High. Pig was pretty good too.
I would. I have had the same experience, and I am certainly a “casual fan”. If you want to throw Raising Arizona on the list of named films then fine, but the quote is “mainly from stuff like” not “exclusively from”.
Nnobody said anything about those movies. That’s basically the exact opposite of what he is referring to. He is saying that people know him primarily through memes and clips of his older movies. You know, like all of the exact ones that you listed? The bees scene from Wicker Man, etc.Really not very confusing…
“Those of you who saw Moonstruck, and have otherwise failed to absorb any pop culture in the last half century, might be interested to know that Cher has also had some success as a singer.”
And solved mysteries with Scooby and the gang.
Once again the review and the grade seem to be at odds with each other. This review is practically glowing with pretty much zero knocks about the movie, and yet…B+.What’s it take to get an A out of this crew?
I was seeing this no matter what, but good to know going in that they don’t wreck the execution on a great premise.
Cage on Cage, Oh Yeah
I’m a fan and I’ve never felt compelled to watch Leaving Las Vegas nor Moonstruck. I get nothing but sadness from dramas.
Moonstruck is a comedy, and a funny one at that.
I just reviewed Cage’s IMDB page and it looks like I’ve maybe seen ten of his films, and hardly any of his famous or internet famous ones. I’m not really worried about this being good (I’ve already got advanced screening tickets for tomorrow), but I do wonder how heavy it is on the references to his other movies. I have no idea what movie the golden guns in the trailer are from, for instance. Hopefully it doesn’t get bogged down by that sort of thing.
They’re from Face/Off, which I highly recommend.
Hopefully, it’s good enough that it spurs you to watching Cage’s films prior to his meme-icon years. After you’ve seen those, you can watch Unbearable Weight again and enjoy it even more than the first time. Have fun tomorrow!
But does he have the snakeskin jacket that’s a symbol of his masculinity and rebellion?
Fun fact: in his AMA the other day, he mentioned that he gave that jacket to Laura Dern after wrap.
Oooh I always wondered what happened to the jacket. It was very nice.
Nice to see Laura Dern involved with one successful rebellion at least.
Zing!
I’M A CAT! I’M A SEXY CAT!One of the greatest Nicolas Cage quotes ever. The fact he’s actually never said it (yet) is irrelevant!
I know it’s insane of me to think that someone paid to write about movies might have any idea of what method acting actually is; regardless, it is very much not what Jared Leto does. None of the Stanslavskian methods–not Strasberg, not Meisner, not Alder–consider Leto’s “staying in character” shtick a valid or useful part of the Method and it’s really irritating that professional film writers can’t spend four minutes on the Internet to fact check their cliches.
Alternatively, maybe the meanings of words can change over time?
Words change meaning all the time, over time, in general usage. But since we’re talking about an actual craft and field of study, no, they don’t “change over time” just because a website that relies on scab writers decides they’ve changed in meaning. Just like a writer with no expertise doesn’t get to just randomly redefine the names of diseases, or mathematical functions, or automobile parts. If actual actors come to the conclusion that method acting means something different now, we can talk about it then. In the meantime, think a minute before you decide you’ve come up with a super hot take.
I would definitely NOT consider myself a Nick Cage fan. I love some of the movies he’s in (Mandy, The Rock, Face/Off…) but I don’t particularly get excited about him in new roles. With that said… I’ve seen this movie and it’s legit a very fun time!
Ahh … never change G/O AV Club. I guess all the proof readers were in Chicago.Extrends?
That’s fucking bananas
Crazy brananas!
It’s like extrudes, but more horizontal.
Two CIA agents, played by Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz (reuniting from The Oath)…And now Apple TV+’s The After Party, too.
Not surprised. Cage can be and has been good when provided the right material. Sounds like this movie was ‘the right material’.
Saw it. Was reminded of a film I hadn’t thought about in 15 years: Snakes on a Plane. A lot of internet hype, but once you go you feel like you already know the punchline to the joke. It’s also looking like both of them are going to fail commercially, for whatever that’s worth.
Admittedly, I don’t know Nic Cage super well, so maybe I missed the movie on some level, but I really did not enjoy it. Not bad, per se, but I spent most of the run time bored or irritated by the choices. The “twists” feel really telegraphed and nearly all of the emotion feels unearned. The father-daughter plot at the center of the film has essentially nothing original to say. I definitely laughed a few times, but even when I did the jokes were pretty obvious (Paddington 2, the wall gag, etc). The cloying music was probably my least favorite part. That said, Nic Cage is great in it, so it does end up working as a testament to his abilities to get impressive results out of lackluster material.I’ve seen a lot of references to Being John Malkovich in coverage of the movie, but it reminded me more of a sterilized Adaptation. In addition to the fictionalized versions of real people, the film drifts towards being an action movie (Spoilers?: and is partially about its own creation). Of course, it also stars Cage.I suppose I can see how a person would prefer this sort of thing to Jonze/Kaufman. It’s much less in it’s own head, for sure, so it avoids some of the more neurotic tendencies of Adaptation. But it often feels like it’s grabbing ideas from other media without really knowing what made them work in the first place (Spoilers: Late in the movie it does the thing where you see a fictionalized “Hollywood” version of the events of the movie, but it doesn’t work because the movie itself is so shiny and sterile. It just ends up feeling like the exact same films with different actors).