At its core The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent (2022) is just like most Nicolas Cage movies made in the last ten years; a boiler plate thriller for the direct to video/streaming markets. Cage must infiltrate an arms dealer’s organization only to team-up with his supposed enemy to rescue his own family from a greater evil. The difference is that Nicolas Cage plays a version of himself.
The Cage in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent takes the real life actor and filters him through David Spritz. This is a neurotic, insecure thespian struggling to make his relationship with his daughter work while still trying to recapture the success promised in his early career. This Cage has an imaginary Cage he talks to (à la Elvis in True Romance via Adaptation) for advice and inner strength. Nicolas Cage’s internal Cage wears a Wild At Heart (1990) t-shirt and sports the haircut Cage had in Vampire’s Kiss (1988). The duality represented by these two Nicolas Cages mirrors the public’s perception of the actor. On the one hand there is the man who goes berserk on screen playing odd characters while on the other hand there’s the quieter, sensitive performer of Joe (2013).
The film is eager to poke fun at Nicolas Cage as evidenced by all of the tongue in cheek references to Face/Off (1997), Guarding Tess (1994), The Rock (1996), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Moonstruck (1987), Con-Air (1997) and Mandy (2018). But the film hesitates to make fun of the “real” Nicolas Cage who acquired a T-Rex skull illegally or whose courtship of Patricia Arquette made headlines. Similarly the intertextuality of the film doesn’t dive that deep into Cage’s immense filmography. This isn’t a meta film for fans of Nicolas Cage but rather for fans of Nicolas Cage memes.
The plot is as absurd as is necessary to work in as much parody as possible. What supports this outlandish metaphysical mess is the chemistry between Cage and Pedro Pascal as the uber fan who lures Cage to his birthday party, thus embroiling the movie star in a CIA operation. They’re an endearing pair to whom wacky hijinks come naturally. Their odd couple friendship recalls the classic buddy pictures of the eighties and nineties; tender yet self critical.
But Pascal and Cage cannot be on screen together the entire time and when they’re not the film drags or feels forced. The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent is an ambitious comedic undertaking that just doesn’t work. It’s a diverting film but one that has nothing to say about fame, power, ego, Hollywood and ultimately Nicolas Cage.
