The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Official Australian release date: 21/4/22.
Viewed: 3/5/22.
Director: Tom Gormican
Actors: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Tiffany Haddish
Genre: Comedy / Action
Rating: M

‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ starts off like a biopic, but with Nic Cage playing “Nick Cage”, a slightly-nuanced version of himself and almost veers into dramatic territory when it involves his daughter, Addy (Sheen). But his ex-wife Olivia (Horgan), agent Fink (Patrick Harris), Vivian (Haddish) & Martin (Barinholtz), as well as Javier (Pascal) help keep it on track as a mostly-comedy.

Cage is forced to take a gig going to super-fan Javier’s party in Majorca, Spain, where it’s quite funny to see The Mandalorian in dick-togs and fawning over Cage! Then a bit of plot is introduced with Vivian & Martin being CIA agents who recruit Cage to spy on Javier & Lucas (Leon). When his family gets endangered, it becomes a full-on action film.

While maybe trying to be too meta for it’s own good, it’s certainly fun for almost the whole time and Cage certainly gets a few good moments to shine. He does well to both play up his action chops – and only a little of crazy-Cage is on show. The setting is lovely (although apparently Croatia, not Spain), soundtrack good, over quite quickly (~100min) and supporting cast excellent.

Overall: Fun twist on the action-comedy.
 
Gav’s Rating: 3.5 stars.