THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT (2022)

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT (2022)

Tagline: Nope

(Action, Comedy, Nonsense) [R]

Whether you like it or not, you have a gift; and that gift brings light and joy to an increasingly... dark and broken world! And to turn your back on that gift is to turn your back on the... entire human race!

In this one, a made-up version of Nick Cage decides to accept a 1 million dollar offer to attend the birthday party of one of his hardcore fans named Javi. Once he arrives it becomes apparent that Javi actually wants to get Nick Cage to do a movie based on a script he wrote. The two decide that they will actually work together when the CIA interrupts them telling Cage that Javi is actually an extremely dangerous man who has kidnapped a young girl. It doesn’t take long before Cage’s own family is caught in the crosshairs and he must utilize his library of acting talent and characters to save them. 

First off, I pretty much love Nicholas Cage as an actor. He does have some really janky roles, and is in movies I don’t like and would never see, but his catalog is big enough to have some gems in it. Personally is a different story. It seems like you might walk up to him and get “nice Cage” and other times get “drunken jerk” Cage. So it feels like anyone’s view of Nicholas Cage can vary wildly. In this role, we kind of get 2 different movies. The first half is a giant train wreck and this is one of the few times ever that I just wanted Neil Patrick Harris (who plays Richard Fink) to shut up. 

I almost turned this thing off especially when both Cage and Pedro Pascal’s character Javi both decide LSD is the way to get creative. Overall I cannot stand drugs in movies in general, so this whole sequence was a massive downer. Fortunately, in the second half of the film, this thing starts to at least take some direction that doesn’t feel totally pointless. 

Acting-wise, Tiffany Haddish shines as CIA agent Vivian and I really liked Lily Mo Sheen’s role as Addy Cage. She showed a bit of range for being an actress that has only been involved in 4 acting roles. As much as Nicholas Cage has to do in this movie I didn’t like him at all for half of this thing. Maybe that’s because he did a good job? I couldn’t stand Pedro Pascal as Javi, but that is not uncommon. I haven’t liked him in anything that’s come out this year. The other actress in this that I didn’t like at all was Sharon Horgan as Olivia. So yeah, for me in regards to acting, much like the rest of this damn movie was a mixed bag. 

Where this thing redeems itself a bit is in the second half. It’s at that point that Cage starts to become a more likable character (he’s playing 2 characters in this) and the story actually starts to kind of get fleshed out. Then they slam some “heart” into the mix and I have to give this movie credit for at least trying to let you leave the theater not feeling like Hollywood is just a totally depraved nightmare scape of ash and dust people without a moral bone in their bodies. We do get a few funny scenes as well, but most of those are in the previews and many of them are muddied by terrible writing. 

Overall I have a hard time getting behind movies that seem like they were written by someone doing a Mad Libs book where you can only pick profanities to fill in the blanks. This is one of those. If you are going to do that in this movie, at least have it fit the situations, have comedic timing, or at least feel natural. None of that works in this and we get half a movie where nothing really comes together.

For those reasons, I have to give this thing a 3 out of 7. This is a rough one…almost an unbearable weight. 

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