Do you know that I watched this movie not two months ago and yet for the life of me I can’t remember what it’s about? I know there will be some exotic destinations, chase scenes, and shootouts but the main story eludes me. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is an attempt to make a meta action comedy harnessing the online popularity of its two leads. The end result is a forgettable and mildly entertaining movie worth exactly one viewing. I guess its biggest quality is that you’ll be able to watch it in a couple of years like you’ve never seen it before. Before we start, let’s unpack a couple of things.
The title of the movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a reference to the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, written by Czech author Milan Kundera. As you can notice, the novel is rather philosophical (existential, to be more precise), examining the concept of destiny, love, life, and many other fascinating subjects. The term meta action comedy means that the movie is trying to blend reality and fiction into one. If you watched the nineties action-comedy Last Action Hero, you’ll be familiar with the concept. So, in this movie, Nic Cage plays himself, Nic Cage. Moreover, the story somewhat reflects his own life experiences.
Director Tom Gormican and writer Kevin Etten took this premise and added a classic action plot to it along with a classic buddy cop gimmick. Of course, the busiest man in Hollywood and everyone’s slutty daddy Pedro Pascal jumped at this opportunity. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent also features Neil Patrick Harris and Demi Moore. A classic summer smash-and-grab blockbuster with exotic locations, familiar faces, fast pacing, and a couple of jokes. This is a movie you want to like especially considering just how close it follows Cage’s ark.
It’s also full of this odd energy generated by Pedro and Nic, feeding off of each other. It’s really remarkable to see something like this. And it’s one of the main reasons why I decided to recommend you this movie. However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t feel sleazy for doing so. Mostly because this is such an in-your-face commercial product that I ain’t even mad, it’s amazing. In one fell swoop they decided to catch both the millennials and younger generations just learning about Cage.
Nick Cage is an actor struggling to get good roles. With the money tight, he accepts a proposition from one of his fans to visit him on the beautiful and sunny island of Majorca, Spain. Cage is supposed to get one million dollars in return for this fairly easy gig. However, once he arrives there, things start to get increasingly complicated and dangerous.
After all of this, I still have to say that The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is just superficially “meta”. Most of all, the story is exceedingly superficial, flashy, but superficial nonetheless. Again, you get a feeling that this is a massively commercial product with just enough charm to make it watchable. Most of the jokes just didn’t work for me, they felt forced and cheap. Some of them were just fine although I watched the movie in a pretty bad mood, so there’s that.
Finally, it’s so funny to think that in trying to make this supercharged Cage movie they almost failed. If that happened this movie would’ve drowned in the sea of similar Cage projects. But hey, at least it would open a possibility for a future meta-meta movie.
Director: Tom Gormican
Writers: Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish, Paco León, Sharon Horgan, Neil Patrick Harris
Fun Facts: Pedro Pascal is a fan of Nic Cage in real life.
Rating:
IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11291274/
