Nicolas Cage fans rejoice: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

I can’t remember a recent film that has made me laugh as much as this outlandishly yet accurately titled piece of satirical auto-fiction starring Nicolas Cage.

Nicolas Cage as Nic Cage and Pedro Pascal as Javi in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (M)
In cinemas
★★★★½

Fans of Nicolas Cage, who include three lead characters in this movie, Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal), mid-20s Nicky Cage (Nicolas Cage) and present day Nick Cage (Nicolas Cage), will love The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

I can’t remember a recent film that has made me laugh as much as this outlandishly yet accurately titled piece of satirical auto-fiction.

The whole idea of an A-list male actor playing – and playing with – himself made me wonder who could do it. Johnny Depp, maybe.

Yet the correct answer is provided, via the most elongated expletive in cinema history, when Nicky Cage confronts his present self in a bar: “Nick F………………..king Cage.’’

“You’re a f..king movie star,’’ he adds, “and don’t you ever forget it.”

This verbal and physical face off between the Wild at Heart Nicky Cage and the man he became, achieved through special effects, is a highlight, and it is not alone.

I use “face off” as it is the title of a 1997 Nicolas Cage film. However there is such a multitude of references to and jokes about his films, and the whole bonkers business of making movies, that if we dwell on this too much we’ll run out of room to say anything else. We’ll be stuck in some sort of only-in-dreams limbo between Moonstruck and The Croods 3.

This 107-minute movie is directed by Tom Gormican and written by the director and Kevin Etten. The duo created the 2016 supernatural sitcom Ghosted.

In a media interview, Etten explained how this film came about. “Tom and I had worked on a television show together, and he had the kernel of an idea, which was, ‘What if Nic Cage played a character named Nic Cage?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, yes, I’m all in’.’’

This is how movies are made.

Here, then, is the set-up: 58-year-old Nick Cage, who won an Oscar at 32 for Leaving Las Vegas, is deep in debt and working his butt off. There’s a revealing interview with the actor in the April edition of GQ that puts this in a biographical context.

When he fails to land the “role of a lifetime”, a movie that combines “[Citizen Kane co-writer Herman] Mankiewicz and King Lear”, he agrees to a million dollar deal to appear at the birthday party of a billionaire super fan.

The fan, Javi, lives in a clifftop estate in Majorca, Spain. As far as the taxman is concerned, he made his fortune through olive oil, but the CIA thinks he is an arms dealer.

The movie opens with the 16-year-old daughter of the president of Catalonia being kidnapped from her living room as she watches the 1997 movie Con Air.

Cage loves but lives apart from his 16-year-old daughter, Addy (Lily Sheen), and her mother, Olivia (a terrific Sharon Horgan).

When he drunkenly sings a song at the piano during his daughter’s sweet 16th, his ex sums up their intimate, complicated relationship. “Oh f..king Jesus.”

When two CIA agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz) spot Cage alighting from a private jet in Majorca, they come up with a plan: he will be their inside man to bring the alleged arms dealer to justice.

Cage agrees, thinking his “nouveau shamanistic” acting method is a perfect fit for espionage. However, he and Javi, who has written a film script, bond like blood brothers, which complicates matters.

Together they work on Javi’s film – a character driven bromance for an adult audience – while Cage does a bit of spying on the side.

This male bonding is another highlight. Pascal, so good in the TV series Narcos, is perfect as the obsessed fan who is even more emotional than “Mr Cage”, nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, about the power of filmmaking.

Wait for the scene where he reveals his three favourite movies. The first two are not surprising but the third comes from nowhere … until Cage sits down with him and watches it and weeps.

And the scene from the trailer, where they have to climb a wall, vowing life and death loyalty to each other, is much, much funnier in the full take, for reasons I will not reveal here.

All the supporting cast members are terrific, especially Neil Patrick Harris as Cage’s agent Richard Fink. Demi Moore also has a cameo role.

As this is a Nicolas Cage film, and the CIA and a purported global criminal are involved, there’s a good chance the character-driven bromance will develop into an action thriller involving guns and car chases.

This is not an autobiography. It is an actor playing fictional versions of himself. The present Cage is Nick, not Nic. Yet this actor is one who knows the gap between man and myth can be thin at times.

His “nouveau shamanistic” acting method is real. He’s discussed it in interviews. It means augmenting the imagination, which is exactly what he does in this film, and it is so much fun.

As for the title, I suspect it draws on Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, filmed in 1988 with another method actor, Daniel Day-Lewis. This movie is the Unbearable Heaviness of Being Nicolas Cage.

Have I seen better films, ones that might merge Citizen Kane and King Lear, in the past 12 months? Yes. But this one stands alone as the most entertaining two hours I have spent in a cinema in a massively long time.

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Polar Bear (PG)
Disney+
★★★

In his fascinating new book, The Social Lives of Animals, Ashley Ward goes in to bat for creatures most of us want to keep at least a cricket pitch clear of.

Rats, cockroaches, termites, locusts, vampire bats and even piranhas deserve our awe and respect, the Sydney University-based Scottish behavioural scientist reckons.

British filmmakers Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson play it safer in a Disneynature documentary released to coincide with Earth Day on April 22.

Polar Bear, as the title suggests, is about polar bears adapting to changing conditions in the Arctic. The focus is on a female bear and her twin cubs, a girl and a boy.

The film is told by the female cub and is aimed at younger viewers.

Indeed the cub’s story, narrated in the first person by Oscar nominee Catherine Keener, has the feel of an animated Disney movie, such as when she complains about having seaweed rather than seal for dinner.

The intention, however, is serious. The filmmakers do not deliver a lecture – far from it – but their message is that global warming is a possible threat to polar bears, who number about 25,000.

“How are we to survive without ice?’’ one of the cubs asks. “I am reaching the limits of what I know about this world.”

The film crew spent 241 days in the Arctic and the result is beautiful to look at. Highlights include the cubs’ first meeting with a huddle of walruses who, close up, look a bit like a tusked Mr Magoo.

However it is the search for prey – including walruses – that dominates ursine days. With the young audience in mind there is not too much blood on the ice, but nor is it ignored.

The cubs themselves are at risk, as male bears, short of food, will eat their own. The whole committed mother-absent-father relationship has a bit of Me Too about it that might make older viewers chuckle.

When the female, in her third year, finds a mate, what he does reminds me of that old joke, not suitable for younger ears, about how most men are like wombats.

This 85-minute documentary is a beautifully filmed introduction to a majestic animal. Viewers of all ages will finish it with questions on their minds. The filmmakers recommend Polar Bears International (polarbearsinternational.org) as a good place to start looking for answers.

The website includes a polar bear tracker that kids might find cool. I’m tracking bear No. 6, Portia, because I like Shakespeare. She’s a 12-year-old with a one-year-old cub. Dad is long gone. “Just as suddenly as he arrived, he left again,” the female cub remembers of her first love.

Disneynature’s Polar Bear