The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

We liked a lot this romp in which Nicolas Cage plays a version of himself––divorced, charming, yet unreliable, insecure, narcissistic, and needing a job––who travels to Europe to meet a superfan and gets involved in espionage. Wonderful location shots and high production values plus fun supporting work from Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish, Sharon Horgan, Lily Sheen, and more add to the enjoyment.

You don't have to be an obsessive Cage devotee to like this but it wouldn't hurt. There are references and/or clips from too many of his projects to count. And his screen credit here is his birth name Nicolas Kim Coppola (his father was Francis' brother).

Directed by Tom Gormican from a script by him and Kevin Etten, it moves along at a steady clip. Although there is one fantastical element that I wouldn't have missed, it doesn't ruin the movie.

Mark Isham's alternately moody and lively score can be streamed on Apple Music and others.

The settings include Dubrovnik, Budapest (including the Urania National Movie Theatre), and Los Angeles (including the Sunset Tower and Chateau Marmont), shot beautifully by Nigel Bluck.

Cage was last blogged for Pig, Haddish for The Kitchen, Horgan for Together, Sheen for Everybody's Fine (in which she played a young version of her real life mother Kate Beckinsale. Her father is Michael Sheen), Isham for scoring Judas and the Black Messiah, and Bluck for shooting The Peanut Butter Falcon.

I think I watched the first season of Narcos, in which Pascal played the drug kingpin modeled after Pablo Escobar, but he plays this role for laughs. This is Gormican's second film script (after writing with Etten on 4 episodes of a TV show) and directing debut. Etten has produced and/or written quite a lot of TV shows and this is his first movie screenplay. 

Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average is a not-quite-massive 86% and its audiences' similarly sized at 87. We watched it July 19 as a rental from Apple TV/iTunes.