The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

 

This is the longest I have gone between seeing a new film in a theater and having a post for it here on the blog. You think for a guy who is retired, I'd have plenty of time for the content I post here, but my life is never as simple as I think it is going to be. For instance, on the Lambcast, of which I am the host, I had my friend and previous cohost Jay Cluitt of Deep Blue Sea: The Podcast, host in my place, because I was in California for the TCM Film Festival the weekend this opened. The podcast records on Sunday, I could not start editing it until Tuesday, and I wanted to get the post up on time, so I edited the podcast before seeing the movie myself. The guests and Jay were pretty good about not giving too much away, but I did have to hum to myself in a couple of places while still trying to make the recording presentable.

It has been a week since I saw the movie and I am happy to say that if I had been on the podcast, my reaction would have mirrored the other guests. "Massive Talent" is one of the most meta, self aware projects you can imagine, while still being sincere and a real movie. It is not all jokes about Nicholas Cage and his eccentricities, which he seems willing to acknowledge, it is also a buddy picture and an action adventure film. The action adventure part is not as effective as it could be because director, Tom Gormican, is no Michael Bay. The stunts and action remain in a lower budget range and they are a little too much by the numbers, but the relationship material sings.

Cage is terrific, playing a fictionalized version of himself and mocking some of his own predilections as an actor. His esoteric delivery style mixed with his true skill at dramatics helps keep this from flying off the rails as a simple parody film. He underplays the scenes with the Hollywood types and hams it up with the gangsters that the film has him get mixed up in. Pedro Pascal is hilarious as the super-fan Javi, a rich guy willing to go to any length to get Nic Cage to do a movie he has written out of love for the actor. Their relationship is the core of the picture and it is developed pretty well. The scenes of them bonding are well thought out, and then they are subverted by a couple of film tropes that are obvious but fun. There are a lot of chase scenes, and there are a couple of misunderstandings that could have come out of any 1970s sitcom. The most out of place but still fun example is a sequence where the pair have dropped acid and are operating a vehicle and living with a huge amount of paranoia.

The family issues that the screen writer/director and his collaborator tack on to the movie feel a bit off. They seem to miss some of the humorous elements of Cage's real life family history and instead create a fictional conflict that is merely a convivence for the action plot that takes over in the second half. That was probably going to be necessary for Cage to sign on for in the first place, Five marriages seems like it would be fertile ground for some humor, especially the one relationship with the only child of the greatest entertainer to ever touch the stage. My guess is that Cage would be less light hearted about those issues than the professional ups and downs he has faced.

Here is a link to the Lambcast I mentioned earlier. I agree with everyone.