In 'The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,' Nicolas Cage tries very hard to be Nicolas Cage. Read BilgeEbiri's review
Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Photo: Katalin Vermes/Focus Features I don’t think aspirationist is a word, but I think Nicolas Cage would forgive me for making up a word to describe him, because that’s exactly what he is: American cinema’s great aspirationist.
What makes Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent special, then, is not so much that Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage but that the film presents us with a Nicolas Cage who spends a lot of time aspiring to be more like, well, “Nicolas Cage” — or as the film puts it, “Nick fuckin’ yahow! Cage!” That yelp comes courtesy of an unhinged, floppy-haired, de-aged version of Cage that “the real” Cage occasionally finds himself talking to, a version that still exists in the popular...
And so this self-centered celebrity and neglectful parent, running low on money and struggling to get the roles he really wants, agrees to fly to Mallorca to attend the birthday party of a Spanish billionaire named Javi for a million dollars. Depressed about his professional fortunes, Cage plans to announce his retirement from acting right after this last gig.
Cage’s dilemma reflects the psychological rift in his character. The young girl he needs to save happens to be around the same age as his daughter , whom he loves but has alienated through his self-absorption. Javi, on the other hand, gives the movie-star egomaniac side of Cage renewed life, telling him he can’t retire. “You have a gift,” he tells Cage. “And to turn your back on this gift is to turn your back on the entire human race.
There are modest twists here and there, and a couple of dropped bits suggest that the picture has gone through its share of postproduction challenges. In its broad strokes, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a fairly by-the-numbers action comedy, one that sometimes wears Cage’s presence like a talisman against the bad juju of slipshod storytelling. But the talisman works because the film never loses sight of its touchingly nutty premise and because Cage remains a compelling actor.
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