'Unbearable Weight' showcases Cage's career

Script is littered with references to Cage films

Kirk Boxleitner | May 05, 20220

Courtesy photo count

Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage bond over cinematic storytelling in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent."

What's perhaps most notable about "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," a charmingly affectionate sendup of the iconically bizarre public persona of Nicolas Cage, is that its most compelling performance doesn't come from the actor you'd expect.

In both his best and worst work as an actor, Cage has always managed to distinguish himself from his peers, in no small part because he never gives any performance less than his all. To his credit, he commits just as wholeheartedly to this film's portrayal of a fictionalized version of Cage who's more than slightly self-absorbed, to the point of hindering his career and alienating his family.

(For those curious, the makeup artist ex-wife played by Irish comedian Sharon Horgan is based on none of Cage's current or former wives in real life. Cage does have two adult sons, Weston and Kal-El, but the teenage daughter played by Lily Sheen, herself the real-life daughter of actors Michael Sheen and Kate Beckinsale, is likewise invented.)

Desperate for gigs after a devastating rejection for the role of a lifetime (from real-life filmmaker David Gordon Green, also playing himself), Cage agrees to a million-dollar payday in exchange for appearing at the birthday party of billionaire Spanish playboy Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal), a superfan of Cage.

As is only fitting for a film that's a tribute to Cage's eclectic career, the script is littered with references to even his less well-known or well-received films. But as Cage is informed by a pair of CIA agents that Javi is the suspected head of an international arms cartel, whom they believe has kidnapped the teenage daughter of a reformist politician, Cage finds himself won over in spite of himself by the enthusiastic Javi, whose shrine to Cage's movie memorabilia, and comprehensive knowledge of cinema as a whole, earn Cage's approval.

Pascal has been working relentlessly behind the scenes since his 1999 bit-part role on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to achieve the sort of "overnight success" he's enjoyed with "The Mandalorian" on Disney+.

Like Raul Julia before him, Pascal has used his distinguished Latin-American machismo to explore what manhood means through his roles, whether as adoptive single father Din Djarin in the "Star Wars" universe, 1980s-era fake-it-till-you-make-it business mogul Maxwell "Max Lord" Lorenzano in "Wonder Woman 1984," and even slumming thespian and sex addict Dieter Bravo in Judd Apatow's "The Bubble" on Netflix.

And when you set aside the CIA subplot that's driving the action, and the absurdity of Cage's quasi-self-aware cry-for-attention antics, what you're left with is a film about two grown men who desperately wish their real lives could be as dramatic and meaningful as the movies they love most.

Watching Cage and Javi drop acid and work themselves into a paranoid frenzy, as their mutual brainstorming session to develop a film they could make together leads to them fleeing from imagined foes, felt like nothing so much as childhood memories of best friends acting out favorite films and TV shows on playgrounds.

Because in spite of his square jaw, refined accent and handsomely tousled hair, Pascal's Javi is, like Cage himself, an unabashed nerd who wishes he could be a little kid again, and he radiates the quiet, lonely pain of being emotionally closed off from such non-self-conscious bonds by his own oppressively adult manhood.

It's laugh-out-loud hilarious when Cage and Javi reenact the cliché of the one escapee who's forced to leave his compatriot behind, as they attempt to scale a wall together, only for these two stoned idiots to discover they could have just walked around the wall the whole time. But it becomes suddenly very moving indeed when you realize their characters' anguish over being separated was extremely real, like Abed sacrificing himself to make-believe hot lava to save his best friend Troy in "Community."

I came away from this film wishing the real-life Cage well, and eagerly awaiting to find out how Pascal would surprise and impress me next.