The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Written by Cameron Geiser
Who is Nicolas Cage to you? Is he the manic and over the top movie star of the 1990’s from films like The Rock and Face/Off? Is he the deranged presence like his performances in Mom and Dad, Mandy, or Drive Angry? Or is he just the guy that stole the Declaration of Independence that one time? Nic Cage has been many things and many characters in his long career, but he’s never played a fiction version of himself, until now.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, if the title tells you anything, is an incredibly self aware film when concerned with its central subject. This exaggerated version of Cage, Nick with a ‘K’ here, is infamously swimming in debt in the film’s opening act. Nick’s obsessed with getting a part in the next film from Director David Gordon Green (Cage tried to get David Lynch for the cameo, but the Pandemic took that glorious reunion from us), and he’s got serious connection issues with his teenage daughter. After getting officially turned down for the role and drunkenly ruining his daughter’s birthday party, a disheveled Cage decides to take up an offer his agent, Neil Patrick Harris, brought up earlier. For $1 Million dollars, Cage must attend a superfan’s birthday party and entertain the people. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, a whole lot. Cage barely steps off the plane when the CIA agents on the scene are wildly thrown off course as a Hollywood celebrity saunters through the airport lobby. The Billionaire Olive-oil export magnate and Nick Cage superfan Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) may also be a gun running Kingpin in his free time. Cage is initially slow to enjoy himself in this tropical paradise, that is until he and Javi connect as film nerds who both love The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Paddington 2. Cage and Javi quickly become the best of friends, that is until Vivian, a CIA agent played by Tiffany Haddish, tells him otherwise. Apparently, Javi’s got the teenage daughter of a local politician held hostage in order to sway an election. Vivian decides to utilize the Hollywood actor and coerce him into doing a little subterfuge for them. Which results in Cage staying on the island with Javi as they work on a script together.
No matter which version of Nicolas Cage you like, you’ll find him here in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
The film does feel like a bit of a throwback to the era of casting two big name actors for an action-comedy that’s sold almost entirely on the power of two combined movie star names. Like the Shanghai Noon or Twins of yesteryear, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent teams up Nic Cage with Hollywood’s (relatively) new kid on the block, Pedro Pascal to mostly hilarious results. The whole film hinges on the chemistry between these two characters, and luckily for us the pairing is a treasure trove of fun. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the other version of Nic Cage that we get in the film. Every so often, a digitally de-aged version of Nick Cage, referred to as Nicky, appears to lambast our Nick Cage and remind him that he’s a movie STAR, not an actor “working on the craft”, or anything else for that matter.
Modelled off of the actor’s infamous 1990’s public persona, ‘Nicky’, is a very toxic and intimidating presence, and one that fights Nick for control within him. In preparation for this film, the real Nic Cage details that he was looking up old interviews, like the one he did on Terry Wogan in 1990, 'I was promoting Wild At Heart, doing karate kicks, throwing money out at the audience, and I thought, "That guy is a really obnoxious, arrogant, irreverent, mad man — and I think he needs to be in this movie."' The film is all the better for that choice. It’s in this surreal and meta tonal space that the film truly finds its voice. Paired with a very front and center love of cinema as a whole, not just the ones that star Nic Cage, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent merges the many corners of Cage’s film career to form an, admittedly silly, but sufficiently entertaining action-comedy. Besides, where else are you going to get nods to both The Croods and Captain Corelli's Mandolin?
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.