The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

 It’s hard to say when Nick Cage started playing himself. The seeds of self-reflexivity are already present in his 1987 breakout films Raising Arizona and Moonstruck, where his performances exude a madcap energy that threatens to overwhelm, and probably would have sunk lesser films without the supporting structure and talent to contain him. Certainly by time he appeared in Face/Off ten years later the prospect of Cage playing around with his own on and off screen persona was enough to not only make the film a hit on its release but secure it a place in the pop cult cannon that endures to this day. In the decades since Cage has been more than willing to create cinematic feedback loops out of that uniquely captivating energy, weaponizing and subverting his own myth as Hollywood’s most confounding actor.      

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent uses Cage’s legendary, internet friendly status as its premise, casting the actor as a fictionalised version of himself who has imaginary conversations with another, more fictionalised version of himself in his 90’s prime. Down on his luck, with a stalling career and distant family, the fictional Cage agrees to make an appearance at the island home of Javi (Pedro Pascal) for a birthday party, winding up developing a script with, as well as helping the CIA spy on, the suspected drug runner.

The espionage action elements of the story are played as parody, while the frequent encounters Cage has with his imaginary double bring to mind Adaptation, which used him in a dual role to similarly comment on Hollywood screenwriting tropes like bombastic third act set pieces. Unlike the Charlie Kaufman/Spike Jonze film however, Massive Talent fails to find any cutting insight into the creative process and the financial strains imposed by a clueless industry, instead falling back on broad, toothless jabs at ‘the state of movies’ while indulging a lot of the same bland action comedy it supposedly wants to skewer.

Pascal and Cage are, as always, very charming, creating a loose and goofy vibe when they’re together, riffing on the films they like and getting into little drug fuelled misadventures, but the film around them sorely lacks depth, pandering to film twitter with lazy, winking Paddington 2 references, and giving Cage’s wife and daughter the flattest possible dad-needs-to-be-more-present storyline. Interrogating the actual unbearable weight of Cage’s fame is a legitimately interesting idea, something the actor seems more willing to engage with than the filmmakers, who mostly want to use him as the internet’s favourite in-joke, a shame given how interesting he can be.

Cage’s performances all contain an element pushing on the fourth wall without breaking it, allowing him to play scenes in ways that are bigger and stranger than other actors; one can never expect what he’ll do next, how he might move or sound, but he never breaks the reality of a moment. The best parts of Massive Talent allow him the freedom to be unpredictable, especially when he’s conversing with his volatile, egomaniacal younger self, or reacting to a statue of his Face/Off character that he cant decide whether to destroy or purchase. As a whole though, the film is too conventional to meet Nic Cage in the place where he excels, right on the edge of reason.