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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent review – Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Cage
Playing himself, Cage serves the acting fans love him for – but has this strained action comedy spoiled the joke?
Nicolas Cage has officially revealed he’s in on the joke – but has that spoiled the joke … if that is the correct word? This is a self-aware action comedy whose title is possibly the funniest bit, riffing on the title of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being as well as possibly Dave Eggers’s memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Producer-star Cage plays Nicolas Cage: Hollywood ledge and national treasure (to quote a relevant movie title) now in a midlife crisis, haunted by CGI-doppelganger visions of his angry younger self, no longer booking the big roles and facing a grim future in which, as his agent (Neil Patrick Harris) puts it, he plays the cool gay uncle in a Duplass brothers film.
Cage is living in a hotel, estranged from his wife Olivia (a thanklessly unfunny role for Sharon Horgan) and moody teen daughter Addy (Lily Mo Sheen), who hates the movie classics he tries introducing her to. (I was waiting for Addy to declare herself instead a massive fan of movies by the Coppola family. Maybe that would be an in-joke too far.) Cash-strapped Cage is forced to accept a million-dollar appearance fee at the spectacular luxury home of a billionaire plutocrat Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) who is a besotted superfan. But then the CIA gets word to our hero that Javi is a dangerous cartel gangster and Cage must use his privileged access to bring him down.
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