The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-24)

FILM

an Oscar for Leaving Las

Ve ga s. We get lots of

namechecks of Con

Air, The Rock and

Gone in 60 Seconds

but nothing about

his Elvis impression

in Wild at Heart, his

eating of a plump,

wriggling cockroach in

Vampire’s Kiss, or his theft of

some nappies in Raising

Arizona. Those are the films

on which Cage’s legend really

rests. It’s a bit like someone

posing as a Shakespeare

scholar turning out to have

once read Romeo and Juliet.

I suspect the film-makers

got scared about not reaching

enough people, and so

plumped for the action movies,

even though there’s little in

them that is distinctly Cage: his

gonzo intensity showed up like

a DVD extra amid the fireballs.

Once he’s done his smoky stare

and dulcet intro —“Nic Cage,”

he says, bringing fist and palm

together in front of his face,

like a cross between a movie

star and a mason — there’s very

little Cage can do that evokes

those films. Gormican’s film is

like a watered-down Being John

Malkovich, with hurr-hurr

laughs in place of surrealism,

and a stubbornly tedious

subplot involving a drug

cartel, the kidnapping of a

presidential candidate’s

daughter (Katrin Vankova),

and some CIA agents, Vivian

(Tiffany Haddish) and Martin

(Ike Barinholtz), which soon

leaves the film’s meta-

Hollywood satire far behind.

For much of its running time

you could simply be watching

one of those straight-to-video

Nicolas Cage bestrode the late
Eighties like a Method-acting
Elvis. “I’ve got the hair! I’ve
got the teeth! I’ve got the
eyes,” he declared in Francis
Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got
Married, turning a jock’s brag
into an act of almost divine
self-assertion: I quiff,
therefore I am. In film after
film — Raising Arizona,
Moonstruck, Vampire’s Kiss,
Wild at Heart — he brought a
gonzo intensity to the simple
act of drinking a milkshake
that left you thinking: “Is this
guy for real?”
It wasn’t as simple as
overacting, but nor was it
quite acting, as commonly
understood. It was like an
actor’s version of air guitar:
gorgeously untrammelled
bouts of scene-stealing energy
that Cage seemed only half
in control of (was he in on the
joke or not?), but which
answered a call
older than acting
itself — to commit,
to register, to
connect with an
audience or else
be lost for ever
amid the grey,
dusty shelves
of the great
unwatched. He
grabbed us with
his ego, but

we connected with his panic.

So there’s perhaps less

cleverness to the set-up of Tom

Gormican’s The Unbearable

Weight of Massive Talent

than at first appears. In the

film, Nicolas Cage — or rather

“Nick Cage”— plays himself,

or the version of himself we

imagine him to be in recent

years; a celebrity wasting

away in full public view,

both ignored and somehow

ubiquitous. “You seem to be

working all the time,” his

therapist Cheryl ( Joanna

Bobin) says, and yet he has

to beg for a part from the

director David Gordon Green

in the street in the hope of a

comeback. “Not that we went

anywhere,” he mutters. At

home he is a sad-sack dad,

boring his wife (Sharon

Horgan) and 16-year-old

daughter, Addy (Lily Mo

Sheen), with memories of

greatness past. “You’re a

movie star! And don’t you

forget it!” screams a de-aged

Cage from his Wild at Heart

days, who pops up every now

and again like a cross between

Jiminy Cricket and Norma

Desmond. It makes sense: that

film, by David Lynch, was the

moment Cage’s acting turned

into its own kitschy special

effect, coming right at ya from

the screen.

All this cuts somewhat

close to home, but not half as

sharply as Cage did playing a

Hollywood loser in Charlie

Kaufman’s Adaptation. You

can’t out-meta Nic Cage. He’s

already the most meta kid on

the block. Part of the

genius of Cage’s

braggadocio

is that you

could always

sense the

flop-sweat

behind

it — his

Cage

against the

machine

The Hollywood maverick is playing

himself — again. It’s meta but is it good?

THE

CRITICS

TOM

SHONE

The eyes

have it

Nicolas Cage

in his new

film. Left: in

Peggy Sue

Got Married

Right: Maya

Vanderbeque

and Günter

Duret in

Playground

wildness always had a

touch of the karaoke

bar — so the film’s

peek behind the

curtain is less

revealing than it

seems.

After losing out on

the role with Green,

Nick accepts a million-dollar

offer to fly to Spain and

appear at a birthday

celebration for a billionaire

superfan, Javi Gutierrez

(Pedro Pascal), whose

appreciation of Cage’s work

seems to hinge mostly on the

five-year period after he won

The Unbearable Weight
of Massive Talent
Tom Gormican, 15, 107min
HHH

Playground
Laura Wandel, 15, 72min
HHHH

14 24 April 2022