The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Nicolas Cage stars as himself in the meta action comedy "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," a concept that works as long as he's on-screen.

This is a man who can make a YouTube interview wildly fascinating on any day of the week, so his screen presence has never been in question. In “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” Nicolas Cage is back — not that he ever went away. While Nick develops a relationship with Javi to relay intel back to the CIA, the two men decide to collaborate on their own screenplay, a “grounded adult drama” about their friendship, which adds an extra layer of meta to this already meta project.

[W]hile it's undercut by a plot that is both overly familiar and too predictable, it's a cinematic experience you never stop smiling through.

It’s only upon Nicolas Cage’s arrival in Europe that he actually learns about who Javi Gutierrez is – and none of it is good news. Unfortunately, his world is rocked further when he learns that David Gordon Green has decided to go in a different direction, and Cage makes a decision: he is going to retire. It’s in all ways an admirable performance from the star, not just because of its elements of honest parody (poking fun at not only his bad movies but past financial issues), but also just because of well-rounded it is. Cage’s career is so all over the map that it has gotten hard to define him as an actor – but Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent is like drops of iodine in murky water. Public perception of actors is a bizarre and multifaceted thing. Nicolas Cage is a case study unto himself in this field, having experienced extreme levels of this duality for decades.

Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage opposite Pedro Pascal in Tom Gormican's meta action-comedy. Read the Empire review.

The supporting characters are a little thinly drawn, with Sharon Horgan eye-rolling for Ireland as Nick’s ex-wife and Tiffany Haddish exasperatedly instructing Cage via an earpiece. While Cage leans into his amplified, unfiltered persona (“I should always trust my shamanistic instincts as a thespian!”), Pascal nimbly balances an appealing, starry-eyed guilelessness with underlying shades of threat. They gel well, and the film is stronger when they share the frame than when it’s dabbling in Clouseau-esque slapstick (Cage’s first foray into spycraft) or letting the bullets fly and the cars crash.

A movie where Nicolas Cage plays a fictionalised version of himself, getting caught up in drug cartels and being forced to assist the CIA in taking down his new ...

My only real complaint is that the film does lose some of its uniqueness and charm in its action-packed third act. It's also one that could just be created with the sole purpose of topping up the Nic Cage meme supplies which have no chance of running out any time soon. To my surprise though, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is not only an exceptionally fun time, it’s also an incredibly heartwarming film.

Nic Cage goes full meta in a silly but fun action-adventure film. NOW STREAMING: Powered by JustWatch · Nicolas Cage became a national institution somewhere ...

In a movie where Cage makes fun of himself for a career full of him yelling at the top of his lungs, there’s less screaming from him here than I thought would happen. For the most part, though, Unbearable Weight meets the task by celebrating Cage’s career with a ridiculous film as tongue in cheek as its title. It’s great while it lasts, especially during a sequence where they try to come up with a script idea after taking LSD. It turns into the satire of previous over-the-top Cage performances the rest of the film tries to match. Cage gets the JCVD treatment here by playing himself, a washed-up actor drowning in debts. In the process, he’s gone from one of our most celebrated actors to a self-parody. Nicolas Cage became a national institution somewhere between stealing Huggies from a convenience store and putting the bunny back in the box.

The scenes of [Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal] bonding around Javi's endless compound are the film's highlights. It goes from a self-indulgent meta exercise to a ...

In a movie where Cage makes fun of himself for a career full of him yelling at the top of his lungs, there’s less screaming from him here than I thought would happen. For the most part, though, Unbearable Weight meets the task by celebrating Cage’s career with a ridiculous film as tongue in cheek as its title. It’s great while it lasts, especially during a sequence where they try to come up with a script idea after taking LSD. It turns into the satire of previous over-the-top Cage performances the rest of the film tries to match. Cage gets the JCVD treatment here by playing himself, a washed-up actor drowning in debts. In the process, he’s gone from one of our most celebrated actors to a self-parody. Nicolas Cage became a national institution somewhere between stealing Huggies from a convenience store and putting the bunny back in the box.

“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is the first essential Nicolas Cage movie in at least a dozen years. It's practically a resurrection, bringing a fun, ...

Playing himself, Cage serves the acting fans love him for – but has this strained action comedy spoiled the joke?

As for Cage, this isn’t like Leslie Nielsen sending up his erstwhile straight-lead image for Airplane! and The Naked Gun, nor is it exactly like John Malkovich fabricating a complex fictional self in Being John Malkovich. Cage simply plays Cage in the moderate script he’s been given, in that utterly committed, strangely uncomplicated way that has won the hearts of fans who declare themselves on the right side of the laugh-with/laugh-at dividing line. N icolas Cage has officially revealed he’s in on the joke – but has that spoiled the joke … if that is the correct word? 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.

In it, Nicolas Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself—dubbed Nick Cage—who is roped into writing a movie in which he will star. Yet just when it seems no ...

As Javi is showing Nick Cage his Nic Cage shrine—complete with National Treasure posters, Face/Off wax statue, and Nic Cage sequin pillow—writer-director Tom Gormican's film reveals itself to be a celebration of the kind of movies Cage makes, not the actor himself. We don't watch movies about people trading faces or stealing the Declaration of Independence because we seek to see realistic, plausible things happen on screen. His career obsession has alienated his ex-wife and daughter, and he is being tormented by visions of his younger self, Nicky. In an act of desperation, he accepts $1 million to go to the birthday party of a rich superfan named Javi, played by Pedro Pascal. This all stands in contrast to the real-life Cage, who is married with two sons, and is, presumably, not haunted by visions of his young self. In Massive Talent, Nick Cage is dissatisfied, on the brink of financial ruin, and has just lost out on the role of a lifetime. It doesn't. Instead, just as it starts to teeter on the brink of being a one-note movie whose only concern is using Nick Cage to poke fun at Nic Cage, it twists. In it, Nicolas Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself—dubbed Nick Cage—who is roped into writing a movie in which he will star.

Nicolas Cage plays Nick Cage — maybe, kind of, not really — in a comically romantic, buddy-movie thriller that is also an ode to him in all his Caginess.

There are no surprises other than the movie is watchable and amusing, though it’s too bad Gormican didn’t let Cage and Pascal just go with the absurdist, shambolic flow. “He’s up there in the air,” Pauline Kael wrote in a review of his freak-fest “Vampire’s Kiss,” “it’s a little dizzying — you’re not quite sure you understand what’s going on.” Amen to that. It’s very Hope and Crosby loosey-goosey, though sometimes it’s more blotto Snoop and Martha. Cage and Pascal bounce off each other nicely, with Pascal playing the wall to Cage’s ricocheting ball. It’s a pretty good joke: Cage plays himself, or rather a variation on a star also named Nick Cage. Wrung out, inching toward bankruptcy, proud yet humbled, and yearning for a role that’s worthy of his self-regard, this avatar looks and sounds like the real deal. There’s a story, way too much of one, crammed into an overstuffed, self-reflexive entertainment that soon finds Cage flying abroad. 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.

Also starring Sharon Horgan, Ike Barinholtz, Alessandra Mastronardi, Jacob Scipio, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tiffany Haddish, The Unbearable Weight of Massive ...

If The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent follows a similar release strategy, you likely won’t be able to watch the movie at home until late June 2022. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a Lionsgate release, and unlike other movie studios during the pandemic, Lionsgate has not had a consistent digital release strategy for its films. No. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a theatrical movie, and will not be on Netflix when it comes out. No. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is not a Warner Bros. movie, and therefore will not be streaming on HBO Max when it opens in theaters. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent will begin playing in theaters across the U.S. and the U.K. on Friday, April 22. Right now, the only place to watch The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is in a movie theater.

The film is set for a wider release date of April 22, so it should be available for most folks tomorrow. To find out when and where you will be able to watch it ...

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is available in some theaters across the U.S. with early showtimes this afternoon. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent will be available in some theaters as early as this afternoon with a wider release date of April 22. If you love Nicolas Cage as an actor, our review of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent would suggest that it's a movie you'll to want to watch in theaters.

Pedro Pascal co-anchors a comedy that plays as both a sweet bromance and a celebration of one of our most unique movie stars.

He bonds so quickly with Javi because he’s finally found someone who can understand the descriptor of “Cassavetes meets Iñárritu” – in fact, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent plays more like a bromance at times than it does a meta-portrait of its star. It’s a big win for Pascal. And it makes me wonder whether, in a decade or so’s time, someone will make a meta-comedy about how often he’s probably asked to shove his thumbs in his eyes and act out his death scene from Game of Thrones. Let’s hope so – I’d watch it in a heartbeat. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a film made explicitly for people like me. There’s a sadness to their Cage – he doesn’t understand why people mock him when, in any other job, his level of productivity would be applauded as hard work. But Gormican, and his co-writer Kevin Etten, also gently interrogate the way that stardom robs people of their nuances and their little, human foibles. People who aren’t just Nicolas Cage fans, but whose adoration of the actor comes packaged inside a kind of cultish fervour.

The eccentric (to say the least) actor plays himself in spirited meta-comedy. Adam Graham. Detroit News Film Critic. There's a gleam in Nicolas Cage's eye in ...

But Cage, lampooning himself in a museum dedicated to his memorabilia, making fun of his performance in "The Wicker Man" ("not the bees!" For a while it seemed like the actor was gone forever, doomed to ride out his days in dreary straight-to-streaming titles, a shadow of his former self. The agents decide to use Cage as an asset and activate him in the field, and Cage gets to live out his action movie fantasies in real life. The fan, Javi (Pedro Pascal), is a sweet-natured fellow who wrote a script he wants Cage to read, but is nervous to present it to him. "Massive Talent" is a house of mirrors where he's able to poke fun at himself, his persona and his career, and there are references to his gonzo work in "Moonstruck," "Leaving Las Vegas," "Face/Off," "National Treasure," "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" ("underrated for sure," Cage quips), "Croods 2" and more. But in "Massive Talent," the massive talent is back.

Nicolas Cage unpacks the differences between Nicolas Cage, Nick Cage and Nicky in the trippy action-comedy 'The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.'

“It was a long process of trying to figure out how to accomplish that look.” “The de-aging part of it was an algorithm that helps you smooth out any wrinkles and change the shape of the face,” Gormican says. “I wanted that guy to be sort of one of the villains in the movie. “What I did was monumental: I worked my way out of $150 million in debt and I didn’t file for bankruptcy because I was there for my family,” he says. Cage, who played dual roles as identical twin brothers in Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation,” was enamored of the idea of acting opposite his younger self. Why is your career not in the place it should be?’” says Etten. “We felt like the most interesting way to dramatize that was to have the younger self.” “That was a sort of North Star, and we never wavered from that.” “It was a high-wire act, and if I fell, the drop was disastrous.” In the film, Cage is depicted as a narcissist who has at times distanced himself from his family in his pursuit of stardom. “There are a lot of things in this so-called Nick Cage that are not me,” Cage says. “One of our friends said, ‘As a purely business decision, this is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen,’” Gormican says. To prepare for his role as a suicidal alcoholic in the 1995 drama “Leaving Las Vegas,” for which he won an Oscar, he had a friend videotape him binge-drinking for two weeks.

The one and only Nicolas Cage plays himself — and gloriously so — in this gleefully adoring and enjoyable action-comedy. The Unbearable Weight of Massive ...

Various cinemas in Wellington While riffing on its central figure is the aim of the game, it's light when it comes to incisively skewering Hollywood, how it treats talents as distinctive (and massive) as Cage, and why his fame has taken the rollercoaster ride it has. Again and again, that made-for-the-internet feeling twinges, as if Gormican has fashioned a meme of a movie stitched together with gleefully retweeted and reposted Cage clips in mind. The next key aspect of the tale: during this ruse, Cage and Javi genuinely become CBFFs (Cage best friends forever), including while working on a screenplay about new buddies who bond in chaotic circumstances. Here, the man who could eat a peach for days in Face/Off would do anything for as long as he needed to if he could lock in a weighty new part. It is, but given how well-accepted that is, and how much online attention has stressed that fact — including its once-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score — weaving it into this Cagefest is one of the film's many exercises in stating the obvious.