The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (106 minutes)
"I’m currently on acid. Donnie Brasco type situation. BRB." -Nick Cage, played by Nic Cage
Like any red-blooded American, I am a Nic Cage fan. Not a surprise if you’ve been here before, I often write about how action films filled up my childhood and played an important part in how I came to love movies and film. For so long I thought this was “wrong”. The kinds of kids I met (and dated :/) studying film grew up watching obscure black and white films, French films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, or German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari*. I was terrified to talk about how exciting it was to think that The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, City of Angels, and Snake Eyes all came out back-to-back within three years. So, I just didn’t.
Lucky for you I found a whole group of people, both in real life and online, that love the Blockbuster rental side of film like I do. Because now I’m here. And now we’re going to talk about The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022).
Massive Talent joins a short but interesting list of meta films where actors play themselves. And I am not talking about short cameos, those come by the dozen, I’m talking about movies where the majority of the script and plot revolve around an actor (or director) playing a version of themselves. Some well-known examples of this short list include Last Action Hero (Schwarzenegger), Being John Malkovich (Malkovich), Incident at Loch Ness (Herzog), and This is the End (everyone in this). I don’t know if this subgenre of meta cinema has a specific name but I feel this one might be my favorite entry so far.
In Massive Talent, actor Nick Cage (Nic Cage)** decides he is going to quit acting after losing another big role. Knowing that deep down his career is spinning out, he decides he’ll get ahead of his demise and retire. His agent (Neil Patrick Harris) reminds him, however, that he has massive debts, including an $800k bill at the hotel he has been living in for the past year. But there’s hope. Nick can accept $1M to attend a birthday party for his superfan, Javi (Pedro Pascal). Cage initially says no, but after fucking things up with his ex-wife and 16-year-old daughter, AGAIN, he agrees to go. The trip becomes anything but simple when shortly after arriving at Javi’s stunning villa, Cage is roped into spying on him by CIA agent Vivian (Tiffany Haddish). The CIA believes Javi is a dangerous arms dealer and they make Cage their inside man.
The movie not only works but is highly enjoyable for two reasons. Cage commits to playing a not-so-great version of himself, and his chemistry with Pascal is absolute perfection. I was so enamored with their relationship I found myself just outright giggling with joy. As Kaveh Jalinous at bookandfilglobe.com writes, “Cage and Pascal have an almost overwhelming, romance-film-lead level of chemistry, aggressively commanding the audience’s attention even when the story itself is paper-thin.” While I wouldn’t say the story is paper thin-- it’s basic but holds up-- I agree that their relationship is what pulls together each scene and what keeps us enjoying the movie rather than spending our time looking for flaws in the plot.
(Attention! As this is a relatively new film SPOILERS follow from here on out…)
Though its an obvious choice to reveal that Cage’s BFF Javi is not in fact the deadly and dangerous arms dealer the CIA is looking for (that would be his cousin Lucas, played by Paco León) it is genuinely fun to watch Cage be both terrified of Javi and inexplicably drawn to him. If you have been lucky enough to meet someone and instantly feel as though you’ve known them your whole life, you’ll know that it feels like being drunk or high. A euphoric state that’s hard to counter with reality. A feeling Cage can’t fully enjoy as he is constantly pulled down by the weight of Vivian’s frequent texts and reminders that Javi is a bad guy.
Actually, let’s pause here to laugh at how bad the CIA agents are in this movie. Vivian is constantly texting Cage about his secret mission. Texting! While these text messages are the least believable part of the script, even less believable than Nick Cage withstanding a tranquilizer, they do give way to one of my favorite exchanges. After dropping acid at Javi’s insistence, Cage receives one of these many reminders from Vivian. He writes back, “I’m currently on acid. Donnie Brasco type situation. BRB.” I died. One thing I’ve always loved about Nic Cage is his strange comedic timing that can come off as being aloof but is actually pointed enough that it cannot be. This text exchange captures his sincerity and humor in one go.
You can tell that Cage is someone who loves to act for the sake of doing it big, but maybe not necessarily doing it “right.” As Owen Gleiberman puts it in Variety, “Even when the film he’s starring in is trash, his need to act — his need to be Nicolas Cage — has given him a kind of kitsch purity.” We do let the man get away with a lot, don’t we? But perhaps we’re just tired of everyone being so serious all the time. Movies are, at their root, meant to be enjoyed. And don’t we want the people making them to be enjoyable? To be having a good time? I would like to think yes.
Cage also plays a younger version of himself, Nicky, who kind of haunts him throughout the movie. In an interview with Kelly Clarkson, Cage shares that he based Nicky on the version of himself when was doing press tours for Wild at Heart, specifically when he was on the Wogan show in Britain. “So arrogant…I was just awful,” he says. I love this bit of self-reflection of older Cage to younger Cage. For those of us who have also grown up with him on our television screens in our VHS rental boxes, it’s interesting to be reminded that he’s matured too. Not just us. This taste of Cage’s self-reflection should remind us that there is a division between our kitsch hero Cage and the real now grown-up, Nicolas Cage… but I don’t know if this movie is going to help us at all with our blurring of the lines.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is an impressive feat of comedy that explores fame, friendship, and how the people best matched for us love the parts of us that everyone else can find troubling, annoying, or downright hate. I argue this movie is watchable by anyone because of the bromance and its universal comedic moments, but for those who have grown attached to Cage in the same way Javi has… you’re in for a treat.
--Notes--
*This is a direct reference to what Cage claims as his favorite movie in Massiv Talent. Javi’s favorite films? The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Face/Off, Paddington 2.
**Yes, Nic Cage plays a version of himself named Nick Cage.
--References--
https://whatnerd.com/best-movies-where-actors-play-themselves/
I've never even heard of this film, but your article makes me want to check it out. Anything with Nicholas Cage is entertaining. I even liked "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" :)