At the start of director Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Nicolas Cage—or, rather, “Nick Cage”—is chasing a role that he hopes will be his comeback. “Not that we went anywhere,” he keeps reminding himself. It’s a sentiment that will resonate with many a proud Cageoholic. While Cage hasn’t headlined a big-budget studio tentpole in the last decade, he’s nonetheless been regularly and thrillingly experimenting with his craft in countless schlocky VOD projects (2019 saw the release of six alone). Add in the odd, acclaimed indie flick like Pig and his meme-ability in internet culture and this committed thespian’s cult fanbase has now reached an unprecedented fever pitch.
Right out of the gate, Unbearable Weight is plenty cognizant of Cage’s almost congenital inability to stay out of the limelight. “You seem to be working all the time,” says his therapist, Cheryl (Joanna Bobin), wondering why he’s fretting so much about landing one particular role. But for Nick, the part—in a prestige film being directed by David Gordon Green—is about reclaiming that sense of mainstream success of his ’90s and early-2000s heyday.
One character in the film who doesn’t question Nick’s drive is the manifestation of his raging id, Nicky Cage (also played by Cage), a de-aged version of the actor decked out in Wild at Heart duds who pops up intermittently to keep our hero’s eyes firmly on the prize. “You’re a movie star! And don’t you forget it!” screams Nicky when the actor contemplates finishing out his career by simply appearing in independent films. And as Nick tools around L.A., frequently whining to his indifferent agent, Richard Fink (Neil Patrick Harris), or awkwardly cornering Green at a lunch meeting with a spirited Edward G. Robinson impression, Cage knowingly lays bare the desperation of a celebrity eternally afraid of no longer being liked.
Despite this clever setup, Unbearable Weight isn’t the self-reflexive skewering of Hollywood that one might expect. After losing out on his coveted role, a dejected Nick accepts a million-dollar offer to fly to Spain and appear at a birthday celebration for a billionaire superfan, Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal), and the film settles into a familiar routine. Unbeknownst to Nick, Javi is also a drug cartel puppet who’s being monitored by the C.I.A. for his potential involvement in the kidnapping of a presidential candidate’s daughter (Katrin Vankova). So when the two agents in charge, Vivan (Tiffany Haddish) and Martin (Ike Barinholtz), spy the actor arriving at Javi’s Mallorca villa, they promptly recruit him to spy on the billionaire.
Even for those who aren’t dying to know what exactly makes the idiosyncratic Cage tick, the film’s transformation into a broad action-comedy is likely to come as a disappointment, as it feels like an unfortunate exit strategy from the initially heady concept that Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten have built around their star. By the time Javi’s scoundrel of a cousin, Lucas (Paco León), arrives on the scene and kicks into motion a third act full of routine shootouts and car chases, Unbearable Weight will be impossible to mistake for a riff on Adaptation.
Padding out Unbearable Weight is a similarly contrived and inconsequential subplot about Nick trying to restore his relationship with his fictional ex-wife, Olivia (Sharon Horgan), and teen daughter, Addy (Lily Mo Sheen). The filmmakers sprinkle in the occasional reference to Cage’s past work, as when Nick takes Castor Troy’s gold pistols out for one more blaze of glory, but these in-jokes are surface pleasures in a film that consistently chooses broad yuks and sentiment over grit and irony and says little of substance about Cage’s fascinating career.
If Unbearable Weight doesn’t completely sink into banality, that’s due to the friendship between Nick and Javi, which provides the film with a surprisingly emotional undercurrent. For Javi, who’s written a script that he hopes his idol will star in, watching Nick’s performances offers him momentary respite from the shackles of his criminal family. Pascal plays this part winningly, sometimes managing to be simultaneously funny and heartfelt, as in the scene where Javi gives his birthday speach and compares his strained relationship with his father to the one between Cage and Shirley MacLaine’s characters in Guarding Tess.
And in Javi, Nick finally finds a true friend to geek out with about the art form that he loves so dearly. For Cage, Unbearable Weight may not be the full-fledged meta interrogation of his persona that it initially promises, but it does give him an opportunity to simply relax and embrace the everyday, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-loving film nerd version of himself. For a performer who, throughout his career, has always seemed on the brink of gesticulating out of his skin entirely, it’s downright delightful to see him act so comfortably in it.
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