REVIEW: ‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ lightens up its star
Nicolas Cage as “Nick Cage” and Pedro Pascal as Javi in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
It’s pretty common for actors to have a hard time watching the work they appear in. They can’t see past the flaws in their performances, or they find it odd to see their drawn-out experiences on set turned into wholly different worlds.
But Nicolas Cage’s newest project is a bit different. Cage said in pre-release interviews that he’s going to have a hard time watching The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent because the version of himself he was asked to play was exaggerated, played up to align with the screaming, over-the-top movie star that fans picture when they hear Cage’s name. It’s probably a uniquely strange experience, especially for someone who analyzes his craft as much as Cage does.
The film, the second feature from writer-director Tom Gormican, is intended as a tribute to Cage’s roles on screen and his status as a living meme. The story finds the fictional Cage swept up in an international espionage caper, tied to the rescue of a Catalonian politician’s daughter. When “Nick Cage” is invited to attend the birthday of a mysterious Spanish businessman (Pedro Pascal), local CIA agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz) use the opportunity to recruit Cage as their asset. They decide to use Cage’s budding bond with Javi as a means to track down the missing girl, all while Cage wrestles with whether it’s time to retire.
What follows is a funny and occasionally touching story about male friendship and Cage’s character learning when to put his art aside for his family. But Unbearable Weight, for all its dedication to its gonzo subject, sometimes pulls its punches, maybe to massage the ego of the real-life Cage. Cage’s personal life and much-discussed past financial woes are substantially cleaned up by the filmmakers, and the movie goes in a slightly too conventional direction with Pascal’s character, who would have been much more interesting if he were Cage’s new best friend as well as a murderous monster. What we get is engaging, but it never matches the intensity of any of Cage’s beautiful onscreen freakouts.
Tiffany Haddish as an undercover spy named Vivian.
The spy angle is a good excuse to get Cage into some wacky scenarios, but it’s pitched a little too much on slapstick comedy to be believable. Haddish and Barinholtz are odd choices as government agents - given the stakes of the kidnapping, maybe a pair of actors playing straight-talking foils to Cage would have made it easier to believe the peril the actor is supposed to be in. The movie seems to want it both ways - Cage’s inexperience messing up the missions, as well as a life-and-death chase at the end.
The central relationship between Cage and Javi, the Pascal character, is well crafted, and it’s enough to keep you hooked. Javi is nervous around Cage and adorably committed to him. Both characters are playing roles that they’ve lost control of, and it makes sense for them to detect kindred spirits in each other. Were it not for this aspect of their partnership, it would be easy to see the real Cage turning down the project, since the story may have devolved into an echo chamber of references to his previous work.
That being said, it’s a bit disappointing that the edges of the Cage we get here are sanded down. Onscreen Cage has only been married once (instead of five times), and no mention is made of his outlandish homes or fashion sense, or his more eclectic purchase decisions. And for a film ostensibly targeted at other fans like Javi, Unbearable Weight sticks mostly with callbacks to his mainstream hits like Face/Off and The Rock. As long as we’re paying homage to a master, why not some mentions of deeper cuts like Vampire’s Kiss, Bad Lieutenant, or Deadfall?
Missed opportunities aside, at 107 minutes, Unbearable Weight doesn’t overstay its welcome. This is thankfully also true of a Cage alter-ego character called Nicky, who appears to the onscreen Cage in visions, like a devil on his shoulder. Accomplished via some de-aging deepfakery, the character seems to be the filmmakers’ version of the maxed-out Cage cartoon we sometimes picture, but he doesn’t propel the story in a meaningful way.
What the movie really needs is something between the onscreen Cage and Nicky, which might just be the real guy. That hints at how hard it is to compose a character as unique and complex as Nicolas Cage. It’s fun to see some people take their shot in this format, but I’m happy to go back to what we had before: a man hard-wired to make art in his own inimitable way.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent gets three stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
I’m glad that Mandy got a brief shoutout in the shrine scene.
Here’s hoping the Paddington 2 scene results in a few new people catching up on that one.
Apparently Christian Bale was a backup to play Cage if the real guy wasn’t interested. I’m desperate to know what that performance would have looked like.