We’ve all seen the montages of insanity. And the loving spoofs/homages. Nicholas Cage is a one of a kind talent in Hollywood today, somehow indebted to and independent of Hollywood history. Tom Gormican and Pedro Pascal are on hand to perform with and celebrate the work of this one of a kind Hollywood genius, always dealing with his Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
It’s about time Nicholas Cage is playing a version of himself. Movie Cage is in one of those actors crises: overlooked for a part he really wants, he starts questioning his self worth. But he has bills to pay, and his agent Richard (Neil Patrick Harris) convinces him to attend the birthday party of a mysterious Spanish billionaire Javi (Pedro Pascal) for a cool mil. Javi’s business dealings have also drawn the attention of the CIA, where agents Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) and Martin (Ike Barinholtz) are also put on a collision course with Sir Nicholas.
This celebration of the Nicholas Cage experience is long overdue. Dude up and puts out something either great or memeable every year. Tom Gormican and Pedro Pascal know this, and make sure the audience understands too. We get a fun insight into Cage’s personal creative process, especially when Pedro Pascal and he are in this movie’s “two hander,” with Pascal the Robin to Cage’s Batman. Pascal is no slouch himself, but he graciously cedes the stage to Nicholas Cage, and lets the talent cook. Watching Cage’s mind work to craft a piece of art in movie form is a joy to behold, using drugs, Pascal, and whatever other creative inspiration he divines from this Mallorca excursion. Cage’s form of acting naturally amplifies all his feelings, so if he wants you to know he’s sad/happy/excited/etc, his Massive Talent will show you what’s going on, almost always generating laughter because of the sheer audacity/boldness of Cage’s acting and the crazy screenplay.
A movie about a moviestar playing a fictional version of himself making a fake movie while a real life movie happens around them? Gormican’s meta Cage celebration threatens to go even further up its butt than Deadpool does. So the movie grounds the insanity in a simple story: work life balance. Movie Cage is completely subsumed by the joy he gets working, and as a result neglects his wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan) and daughter Abby (Lily Sheen). That “emotional” grounding is the heartbeat the crazy comes back to, and Cage bears the Unbearable Weight of constantly bringing his loopy meta moviemaking insanity back to this basic truth of his life that he can’t escape and has to confront in all sorts of funny ways. Cage projects the younger “id” fueled version of himself obsessed with being a movie star, in a sort of abusive relationship with his past work obsession, and he also literally has to save his daughter from the movie he’s accidentally written himself and his family into. Thematically it works, but more importantly, Cage makes sure we never lose sight of the fact that The Massive Talent has some Unbearable Emotional Weights to deal with.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a 107 minute perpetual celebration. It’s a celebration of Pedro Pascal, an actor who makes everyone better regardless of how much screentime he is getting. It’s a celebration of the beauty of the island of Mallorca. It’s a celebration of creating art and the power of family. And of course it’s a celebration of the one, the only, Nicholas Cage, a shooting star where meme and movie wishes can come true. Finally, it’s another reminder that Paddington 2 is incredible, and deserves to be considered one of the great films in recent memory, maybe of all time.