You’ve gotta hand it to Nicolas Cage – just when you think it can’t be possible to find yet another way to poke fun at him, he goes and flips the script and pokes fun at himself.
And par for the course with Nicolas Cage, he does it in the most ridiculous, most unhinged, most delightfully entertaining kind of way…
‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ is unusual. But then….look at the star. The fact that Cage is willing to play a fictionalized parody of himself and throw his entire career in the spotlight (a career that includes an OSCAR WIN, by the way) all for a good round of mocking – well, it’s a pretty darn fine indication that the guy isn’t near as nuts (or, in some cases, dense) as we think he is.
On the contrary – his self-deprecating performance here is the best, most inspired work he’s done in a long, long time. It’s an irresistibly silly, yet unmistakably smart picture. And….again, like Cage himself….it’s awfully hard to zero in on exactly WHY you can’t turn away from the screen for even a second – so you just shrug and keep watching the sheer madness, never really sure what’s going to happen next.
In ‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’, we find Cage in the midst of a divorce, a career drought and, not surprisingly, a serious financial squeeze (those straight-to-DVD releases aren’t near as lucrative as 90’s Michael Bay action fests). So when a super fan named Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal of ‘The Mandalorian’) offers the fading star a small fortune to fly to Mallorca, Spain, to be a paid attendee at his birthday party, Cage hesitantly takes the gig, fully aware that his options are disappearing – he’s just coming off the heartbreak of losing the role of a lifetime – and this job will put a temporary halt to his cash crisis.
What Cage doesn’t know is that Javi is mixed up in organized crime, and the CIA is not only hot on his tail, but they’re looking at the Hollywood icon’s arrival on the scene as a prime opportunity to have an inside man with their sting operation. Things don’t work out near as planned….do they ever?….and Cage soon finds himself living inside a spy flick not terribly unlike a lot of the movies he traditionally stars in, bullets and car chases included. Oh, and by the way, at no point does the chaos ever dull Javi’s adoration for his guest, as even when they’re running for their lives…and even though Cage suspects Javi is a ruthless killer….the duo continue to piece together ideas for their own screenplay. Now that’s a bromance.
Part of the overwhelming appeal of ‘Unbearable Weight’ is the parade of love that Cage receives; supporting characters are always either watching OR talking about Cage classics like ‘Face Off’, ‘Con Air’, ‘The Rock’….geez, even ‘Guarding Tess’ gets some love. It’s like the ultimate vanity project, but one full of good, cuddly intentions that somehow satisfies action fans. Yep, that’s Nic Cage, alright.