But the best part of The Unbearable Weight is its impressive amount of self-awareness. At others, it’s a straight-faced spy-thriller, with stunts from Cage that are bound to remind the audience of classics like National Treasure and The Rock. At times, it’s a buddy comedy, and Cage and Pascal have such palpable chemistry that they effortlessly lift the genre to the height of its powers. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent expertly weaves together numerous kinds of stories. After arriving in Spain, things take a turn for the cataclysmic when CIA agents Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) and Ray (Ike Barinholtz) inform Nick that they suspect Javi kidnapped a political leader’s daughter, which means the actor is forced to stick around to try to rescue her using all of the stealth and fortitude he learned in his action roles. When Nick’s agent Ted (Neil Patrick Harris) offers him a gig that will land him $1 million to attend super-fan Javi’s (Pedro Pascal) birthday party on the Spanish coast of Mallorca, he has no choice but to begrudgingly accept. (The real Cage landed in tax trouble a decade ago and had to accept some less-than-prestigious roles as a result.) On top of that, his ex-wife Sally (Sharon Horgan) and teenage daughter Addy (Lily Sheen) are at wits’ end with his arrogant attitude (most egregious is that he won’t stop trying to force Addy to sit through The Cabinet of Dr. This version of “Nick” Cage is in the midst of a career crisis, and can’t seem to land a serious role to save his life. No one appreciates this presence more than Tom Gormican, the director and co-writer of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a film that stars Cage as himself. From screaming “Not the bees!” in The Wicker Man to his gloriously bizarre southern accent in Con Air, Cage has been delivering audiences quotable gems and iconic moments since the early 1980s, inadvertently forming something of a cult around himself in the process. It’s virtually impossible to think of an actor who has consistently maintained a larger presence-on or off the screen-than Nicolas Cage. That partly explains all the love here for John Woo’s ballistic, balletic “Face/Off,” even if someone forgot the doves.This review initially ran as part of Paste’s SXSW 2022 coverage. Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz show up as spies who dragoon Cage into a covert operation that allows the filmmakers to shift to more commercial terrain and bring out the heavy artillery. Cage and Pascal bounce off each other nicely, with Pascal playing the wall to Cage’s ricocheting ball.
It’s very Hope and Crosby loosey-goosey, though sometimes it’s more blotto Snoop and Martha. “Massive Talent” finds its mojo once Cage and Pascal team up and start trading quips, dodging obstacles and vamping for the audience. Paired with a second banana (an amped Pedro Pascal), he embarks on an adventure that - in its vibe, beats and banality - is closer to “National Treasure” than David Lynch’s cold, cruel “Wild at Heart.” There’s also an ex (Sharon Horgan) and a daughter (Lily Sheen), who pop in and out and seem to have been written in because: a) producers know they now need more than one woman in the cast and b) they want to prove, à la US Weekly, that celebrities are just like us, except for the private jets. There’s a story, way too much of one, crammed into an overstuffed, self-reflexive entertainment that soon finds Cage flying abroad. Mostly, though, it is a single joke sustained for 106 minutes, amid many rapid tone shifts, mood swings and set changes. (Holding onto the bottle, he sinks and then he drinks.) What’s it about? Does it matter? Does it ever? It’s another Nicolas Cage joint, a romp, a showcase, an eager-to-please ode to him in all his sui generis Caginess. He charms and alarms, jumps off a cliff and, drink in hand, walks straight into a swimming pool without breaking stride. In his latest, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” Cage fidgets and swaggers and smiles so broadly he looks ready to swallow the screen whole. He can be a joy and a conundrum, startling and remarkable, but also fantastically, gloriously untethered. To know or, anyway, to watch Nicolas Cage is to love him and sometimes also be confused by him (which is A-OK). Those eyes, that hair, those choppers and, oh, that purring, whining adenoidal voice, which can change pitch and intensity midsentence (midword!) and often seems a bit stuffed up.
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