Nicolas Cage: Acting genius or mindless meme?
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Credit: Lionsgate
‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ review: A tired Nicolas Cage meme
'The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent' - Tom Gormican
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Half eccentric artist and half cinematic provocateur, the cult of Nicolas Cage has long-flourished in contemporary cinema, with his 1988 movie Vampire’s Kiss becoming the commodity of internet culture in the mid-2000s as the actor became something of a self-indulgent meme. Such a persona has muddied such recent progressive performances in Michael Sarnoski’s Pig and Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy as Cage struggles to wrestle with the economic value of his own absurdism.
Such also happens to be the lifeblood that fuels the heart of Tom Gormican’s brand new action-comedy, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, featuring Cage as a faux-realistic version of his own self. Buying into the cult persona of the actor with rapidly winking nods towards the camera, Cage’s brand new comedy vehicle works to reinforce the age-old quote from American writer E.B. White, “Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process”.
A cash-strapped desperate father, the Nicolas Cage of Gormican’s film touches base with the real-life actor whilst sensationalising the eccentric features that make him such a cultural icon, with his signature Cage rage occasionally coming out throughout the movie. Tired of missing out on starring in his next artistic venture, the actor agrees to attend the birthday party of a billionaire superfan called Javi, played by Pedro Pascal, only for the very same individual to be a number one target for the American CIA.
A comedy crime caper ensues, with emphasis on the comedy, with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent feeling more like a farcical sketch, even if it often tries to strive for something more dramatic. Putting a bromance between Pascal’s Javi and Cage’s Cage at the very centre of the film, screenwriters Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, provide many of the film’s greatest moments when they’re not indulging the cult popularity of the iconic actor, though feel constrained to return to this central joke time and time again.
Whilst it is, almost certainly, the personality of the actor himself that keeps the film afloat, you can’t help but think throughout that there was a far better film to be made using the Oscar-winning performer than this cheap, monotonous comedic gag. Glimpses of such promise creep in whenever Cage’s Wild at Heart character Sailor Ripley appears on screen in phantom, CGI form to advise the main character on his constant wrongdoings, though he is consistently misused, sticking out like a manifested brainstormed thought.
With much of the focus on Cage and Pascal, a tired CIA plot is peddled in the background with little conviction and poor structure, moving from scene to scene with the chocolate-stained patience of a toddler. Instead, this subplot is the mere vehicle for the occasional set-piece, meaning very little when it came to the film’s disappointing conclusion that continued to rely on empty references to Nicolas Cage’s extensive back-catalogue of movies.
Below the layers of memes, forced ‘freakouts’ and over-indulgence, Cage has always possessed greatness, this is the central crux of his beloved internet persona, though, despite delving headfirst into his career, Tom Gormican was unable to allocate this truth. This is because, whilst The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent can be a fun ride, it is ultimately a lame nostalgia trip that works to do little but reference classic taglines of the actor’s career and run the meme of Nicolas Cage to its breaking point.
