Nicolas Cage is one of the greatest actors who ever lived.
Face/Off, Bringing Out the Dead, Moonstruck, Raising Arizona, Adaptation… I could list the numerous masterpieces he’s been in for this entire review. He’s been a muse for cinematic masters like Scorsese, Woo, the Coen brothers, Lynch, Schrader and even his uncle Francis Ford Coppola.
He’s the type of performer who is willing to go all-out for a role, unafraid to make out-there acting choices that only he can pull off.
Which has led to him becoming something of a meme performer. Between his role as one of the biggest name actors in the Bruckheimer-era of silly action blockbusters (The Rock, Con Air, National Treasure) and his unique style of performing, he’s an easy target for the kind of ironic “appreciation” that comes with internet memery. Enter The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a film that tries to thread the needle of genuine respect and jokey “admiration” of Cage as a performer as well as his recent public persona.
Cage plays himself, a down on his luck actor struggling to get by. In massive debt, divorced with an ex-wife and daughter who he can’t properly connect with, and failing to get the kinds of roles that would help put him back in the spotlight, he receives an offer of $1 million to go to the birthday party of Javi (Pedro Pascal), a reclusive Spanish billionaire, and spend the weekend at his mansion. Upon his arrival, he’s approached by CIA Agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz) who inform him that Javi is a suspected crime lord and weapons dealer who is believed to have kidnapped the daughter of the next likely president of Catalonia.
He’s recruited to perform espionage on Javi while simultaneously forming a tight friendship with the man.
When Unbearable Weight is focused on Pascal and Cage, it’s a pretty wonderful buddy comedy. The pair have great chemistry together and are an oddly natural pairing.
Pascal in particular is having a blast as Javi, and Cage matches him stride for stride. Their running bit of “writing a screenplay” while they go on stupid adventures along the Spanish coast is a pleasant bit of metacomedy. Their partnership is the beating heart of the film and the film suffers when the focus shifts away from the two stars and onto the film’s other madcap elements.
Narrative threads about Cage’s ex-wife and daughter as well as the main storyline involving the CIA agents fall flat, particularly in comparison to the effectiveness of the central duo’s bromance.
Be it the overwhelmingly cliched character arc of Cage becoming a better father or the overly broad humor that Haddish and Barinholtz are saddled with, it grates more than it amuses.
Director Tom Gormican’s visual style is similarly mixed. Given the film is leaning heavily on the audience’s familiarity with Cage’s cinematic legacy, you’d be forgiven for thinking the aesthetic of Unbearable Weight is a bit bland. There are certainly aspects that tap into the energy of something like a Bruckheimer film, particularly some of the shots leading up to Cage and Javi’s final confrontation, yet it never quite feels like it hits that next level that the film is looking to reach. It’s the rare modern studio comedy that actually feels like it has directing decisions and scripted comedy beats as opposed to endless improv riffing in flat mid-shots and shot-reverse-shot, but it feels slightly insufficient.
Unbearable Weight isn’t a bad film by any means. It’s mostly a perfectly fine, enjoyable comedy that has pieces in place that could have been great. There is a lot to like in this film, particularly when it comes to Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage’s rapport. Give this to a director with a strong eye and sense of earnest genre comedy, like an Edgar Wright for instance, and this same script and cast would be something legendary rather than a fun couple of hours at the movies. It’s perfectly serviceable, but the constant reminders of the all-time great films of Cage’s ouvre only serve to remind you that Unbearable Weight is a minor note in one of our great performer’s filmography.
