90 Time April 25/May 2, 2022
TIME OFF MOVIES
This is less
a movie
for actual
watching
than
one for
making
noiseTo love Nicolas cage doesN’T make you aN uNder-
represented minority. For decades, his face on a movie
poster was the key to worldwide ticket sales, though he’s
more than just a global star. He has been called the finest
actor of his generation, which is probably true. In his off
years, he’s been jeered at as a guy who’d take any role to fi-
nance the purchase of a castle, or perhaps a choice dinosaur
skull. Does he contradict himself? Very well then, he contra-
dicts himself. He is large. He contains multitudes.
Unfortunately, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,
a meta-comedy of ostensibly epic proportions, is not nearly
grand enough to embrace those multitudes. Cage stars as
Nick Cage, a fictional version of himself who spouts lofty
ideas about acting but who’s finding it harder and harder
to land gigs. He’s also having family troubles: his teenage
daughter (Lily Sheen) resents him, and his impending di-
vorce from his smart and justifiably annoyed makeup-artist
wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan) has left him broke.
Fortunately, his agent (Neil Patrick Harris) has a job for
him: Spanish billionaire and superfan Javi (Pedro Pascal)
will pay Nick to attend the birthday party Javi’s throwing in
Mallorca. Incidentally, Javi has also written a screenplay—
because someone has always written a screenplay.
Nick shows up on the island, hoping to do his bit and
be gone in 60 seconds. But he and Javi end up forging a
warm, manly bond, over LSD and a shared love for, well,
Nick Cage. Their bro time is foiled by a duo of CIA agents
◁
Nicolas Cage, not
to be confused with
Nick CageREVIEW
An enormous waste
of someone’s talent
BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK
( Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz)
who believe Javi is behind a high-
profile kidnapping. Meanwhile, an-
other version of Nick Cage—a much
younger, Wild at Heart–era gonzo id
with unpleasantly pearlescent CGI-
de-aged skin—pops up repeatedly to
remind the older Nick that he’s not a
serious actor but a superstar, and he
needs to start behaving like one.
The Unbearable Weight of Mas-
sive Talent, directed by Tom Gormi-
can, who also co-wrote the script with
Kevin Etten, name-checks one Nico-
las Cage film after another, weaving
in memorable quotes along the way.
Is Face/Off your personal favorite?
Represented! Are you one of those
Cage completists with a fondness for
Guarding Tess? Gormican’s got you!
Clearly, the audience is supposed to
hoot and holler every time they rec-
ognize a Cage reference, which will be
often. This is less a movie for actual
watching than one for making noise.
But poke beneath the aggressive
fun of The Unbearable Weight of Mas-
sive Talent, and you’ll find a depress-
ing act of redemption that doesn’t re-
ally need to happen. The media has
recently made much of how Nicolas
Cage is back, after a too-long period
of making not-so-hot movies for a
paycheck. (Last year he gave a ter-
rific fine-grained, hard-nosed perfor-
mance in Michael Sarnoski’s small-
budget Pig.) We already know that
Cage—with those soulful-rabbit eyes,
that voice like olivine velvet—can do
just about anything. And so his will-
ingness to join in this not particularly
daring act of self-mockery should
surprise no one. This is absolutely a
movie For the Fans, maybe because
nobody knows who to make movies
for anymore. But instead of leading
us to a place beyond ourselves, it only
confirms our ability to identify things
that gave us pleasure in the past. It’s
the dinosaur skull we want, and buy,
leaving greater needs unmet.