I’ve always liked Nicholas Cage even when I’m not wacky about his performance. Why? Because he takes risks. (The first time I ever saw him was in the beautiful Valley Girl. I still remember thinking: “Holy crap … who is THAT??” Great film.) One of his greatest strengths as an actor is that he is not interested in being LIKED – and that, in a movie star of his caliber – is very rare. He makes big action movies – where the audience is on his side – he makes a huge salary with those movies- which then gives him the freedom to do films like Adaptation or The Weather Man on the side. I admire that. But he’s ALWAYS been like that. I didn’t like his slobbery bizarre performance in Peggy Sue Got Married but in a way I thought: Good for him for taking such a RISK. THAT’S where good actors should be. On the edge of success, not right in the middle of it. They should be willing to fail. This is why Robert DeNiro (in my opinion) is no longer an important actor, and his best work can now be said to be decades in the past. He is not willing to take a risk.
The Weather Man is being marketed as a comedy. A black comedy. The movie poster, with Nic Cage staring at us, with a kind of hangdog expression, is the poster for a comedic film, a kind of humorous look at a man’s trials and tribulations. Ho ho ho, mid-life crisis, ho ho ho. But this film is actually tragic. There is very little to laugh about here. Unless you’re a mean-spirited person who likes to see other people sink to depths of embarrassing despair. It is an unforgiving psychological portrait of a man who cannot get a grip on his own life. No one in their right mind would ever look at this movie and think “black comedy”. Sure, there are some outrageously funny moments … but as the movie moves on … the laughs come less and less … This is not black comedy. This is tragedy. This is Death of a Salesman territory. You do not like him, and you would not want to spend time with him, but you ache for him. It is an unpleasant experience, sitting there, watching it. However: not ALL of us out here in America only want pleasant experiences at the movies.
I think marketing campaigns like the one for The Weather Man are a huge mistake. Because you’re missing your main market: the minority of us out there who do not think “depressing” is a criticism, and who do not stay away from “tragic” films. We want more of those.
There are those of us in America who like films about GROWN UPS. Who, yes, LOVE films like Blue Crush but who also want films that are a bit more unforgiving. A bit more brutal. Not feel-good romantic comedies. But movies about LIFE, and life’s STRUGGLES. In the 70s, studios did not feel the need to APOLOGIZE for such movies – the way Paramount is pretty much apologizing for The Weather Man right now.
Less and less in our culture, is there a space for GROWN-UPS. I’m sick of it, frankly. I don’t have kids and I resent having the public sphere geared more and more towards the rated G crowd. I resent having movies be dummed down so a certain demographic will go see it. I’m an ADULT and my money is ALSO worth something in this country. And there are those out there (I know many of them) who have kids but who don’t expect the entire world to be G-rated just because they have children.
That’s why when films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind do well … especially in the midst of a year where pretty much every big “blockbuster” TANKED … I just feel so happy about it. So gleeful. The fact that Napoleon Dynamite and March of the Penguins made ENORMOUS profits (compared to the cost of making the films) – while the big blockbusters hemorrhaged money and didn’t make it back … just make me want to clap my hands in vengeful glee.
The Weather Man is depressing. But I actually don’t find that to be a strike against it. There are many audience members out there like me … who do not say “it’s depressing” as a warning. It’s just a fact.
He is having a midlife crisis. He wants his father’s approval. He feels like he has lost touch with his kids. Things are BAD.
What – such movies shouldn’t be made? Or if they are, we should apologize for them? Or try to trick people into thinking it’s a comedy through advertising?
Ebert nails it in his review – he says it much better than I could:
Dave’s problem is that he is never able to find the right note, the appropriate gesture, and correct behavior, try as he does. Perhaps he tries too hard. Perhaps he is always trying, and people sense it. His wife is not an unreasonable woman, and allows Dave access to the children. But she is amazed that, at this point, Dave seriously expects them to remarry. The girl, meanwhile, puts on weight, and the boy’s counselor wants the kid to take off his shirt for some photos.
Does all of this make for a good movie? I think so — absorbing, morbidly fascinating. One of the trade papers calls it “one of the biggest downers to emerge from a major studio in recent memory — an overbearingly glum look at a Chicago celebrity combing through the emotional wreckage of his life.” But surely that is a description of the movie, not a criticism of it. Must movies not be depressing? Must major studios not release them if they are? Another trade paper faults the movie for being released by Paramount, when it “probably should have been made by Paramount Classics. For this is a Sundance film gussied up with studio production values and big stars.”
I find this reasoning baffling. Are major stars not allowed to appear in offbeat character studies? Is it wrong for a “Sundance film” to have “studio production values?” What distinguishes Nicolas Cage as an actor is his willingness to take chances. His previous film, “Lord of War,” was also about an off-the-map character. Should he stick with films like “National Treasure”? Before that he made “Matchstick Men” and “Adaptation,” both brilliant, but “Matchstick” was criticized because it was directed by a big name, Ridley Scott, while “Adaptation” was by the indie Spike Jonze. Both invaluable movies. “The Weather Man” seems to offend some critics because it doesn’t know its place, and wants to be good even though Paramount made it with a star.
I could not agree with that more.
The Weather Man is a very good movie, with a VERY good performance by Nicholas Cage. He has a moment when he is doing a three-legged race on ice skates with his fat prepubescent daughter – with whom he just cannot connect – and … he so wants it to be a nice father-daughter moment – he so wants it to be a bonding thing … but … it’s not … and his face as he looks down at her, with this wide-open kind of frantic smile … was so tragic that tears involuntarily flew to my eyes.
An in-depth psychological portrait of a man in torment. But a man who can barely even admit he IS in torment.
Also – the film SO gets what it’s like in Chicago in the dead of winter (an experience I know intimately, and still have the ruined tissue of my ear lobe to prove it!) The heaving ice floes on Lake Michigan, the slate-grey skies, the cold wind …
The brutal winter of middle age.
Oh, and Hope Davis does a wonderful job – AND – the little geeky kid from About a Boy (LOVE THAT MOVIE) is now a teenager, and does an amazing American accent. You would never know he was British. Michael Caine, however, does a completely unconvincing American accent. His acting is wonderful, wonderful, but no way is that an American accent. I never buy him as an American. It’s just not … his inherent sensibility. But good accent or no – he and Nicholas Cage have a scene together toward the end of the film – sitting in the car – listening to “Like a Rock” – a scene that was so suddenly powerful that it kind of blindsided me. In the middle of the bleakness- a moment of connection. I hadn’t realized how much I had been YEARNING for that connection and how the movie had NO human connection in it … until that scene. It just cracked me open. Beautiful work.
Well worth seeing.
I hate it when the essence of a movie is completely misrepresented by the advertising. THere was another Nicholas Cage movie that they did that too. Family Man. I think there were maybe 2 or 3 funny moments, but no Laugh out loud funniness and really kind of a sad movie.
then of course, there’s Raising Arizona.
Thanks for writing this. I wasn’t going to see this movie precisely because of the way it was marketed. I’m much more interested in seeing it now.
If we don’t make it to see The Weather Man before it disappears, it will make the must-rent list. Anyone who can span Raising Arizona, Leaving Las Vegas, The Family Man, and this one is okay by me (but I even liked The Rock a little, so feel free to ignore me).
I still tell my kids, when we’ve stopped somewhere and they don’t want to get out of the car, “Okay–but if they attack the car, save the radio.”
Oh, I loved The Rock too!! hahaha I love it when he’s a big honking action hero. It pleases me.
I loved that John Woo film he did with John Travolta – the name escapes me. GREAT acting by Travolta and Cage who have to inhabit each other’s bodies. Travolta, in particular, is quite good.
The film is an action film but it’s really about the meaning of identity – I loved it.
Actor fatigue
I kind of chilled out some this weekend on the blog. I didn’t have much of anything to see and I wanted the guitar post to have the spotlight. I was reading through some of my regular stops this morning and saw this post at Sheila’s regarding The Wea…
YES on the “diminishing space for adults” thing. I grow tired of movies that seem to either be aimed at pubescent (or post-pubescent) boys or aimed at children under 10 who can guilt/play their parents into buying all the danged theme tie in stuff. I used to pretty much love Disney movies but all the tie in crap – the fact that toys are in the stores before the movie even opens, the fact that McDonalds is creating “buzz” through their advertisements – just totally turns me off. I know Disney was always a sell-out, but I don’t remember it as being this bad when I was a kid.
I would just like some kind of good movie that an adult with an adult’s brain can watch.
Don’t know if I’ll go see Weather Man though. I like Nick Cage, I enjoy his acting…but as I’m going through a bit of what might be considered a midlife crisis right now, it might be a bit much for me.
I also hate it when movies are mis-marketed. I think it’s WORSE to make a sad or thoughtful movie and then promote it as a comedy than not to make that kind of movie at all – because you get the people who just want to laugh for 90 minutes in there going, “the hell?” and feeling angry at the end of the movie. I’ve been to a few movies like that – either it was marketed as this Big Serious Meaning of Life movie and it was just stupid, or it was marketed as a comedy and was only such in the Aristotelian sense (i.e., not all the characters die tragic deaths at the end).
And on Napoleon Dynamite – I actually find movies more enjoyable when it’s a good movie WITHOUT any big name stars. ‘Cos there are certain people that are kind of the same in every movie they act in, and you’re like “oh, there’s Tom Cruise” instead of “oh, there’s (character Tom Cruise is playing)”
I think maybe some of the big studios and big stars have got a wee bit TOO big, and like you, I feel a certain schaedenfreude when the big bad blockbuster movies tank, but some little indie flick gets this huge word-of-mouth following.
(I wish they could make more big GOOD blockbuster movies…)
Mere — Yes! “Family Man” was COMPLETELY misrepresented by the advertising. It wasn’t feel good in the slightest. Quite sad, I thought, in the end. I wasn’t sure what I wanted for those people, or what I was “supposed to” want for them. But it was not the portrayal of joyful redemption that ads made you think it was going to be.
Sheila — The movie you’re thinking of is “Face Off”, which scared the shit out of me when I saw it, but which WAS really good in terms of performances. Creepy, scary good. John Travolta playing soulless and supremely evil is just so believable.
Another movie that was (I thought) wildly misrepresented by the marketing was “Gosford Park”. The ads made it out to be some kind of madcap-English-country-house-weekend-romp, people-switching-bedpartners-in-the-middle-of-the-night,
slightly dirty comedy of errors ha ha flick. Then I saw it, and it was terribly, terribly sad. Which was FINE, I would have wanted to see it just as much, maybe more, had I known that it was actually a sad and kind of dark movie. But I was totally blindsided by it. It was so unexpected. The whole time I was sort of confusedly waiting for the funny to start, because the ads had so set me up for it.
I agree with everyone — it really does films (and filmgoers) such a disservice to spin them as something they’re not. Frustrating, and insulting.
his slobbery bizarre performance in Peggy Sue Got Married
I am so glad you wrote that. I have never heard anyone else complain about the slobbering but it bothered me so much, all that spit collecting on the corners of his mouth. Eww. But I agree he makes an interesting action hero. Cant beat Con Air especially because it includes John Cusack.
I would highly recommend seeing “Lord of War.” It’s quite good and I really didn’t think Cage could pull off the amorality required of an arms dealer without being overly snarky, but he does very well.
Vampire’s Kiss. Stellar.
Comment on the ‘dimishing space’ thing. My stepsons saw ‘A river runs through it’ when they were 6 and 10, and watched it over and over again. And let’s face it.. the movie is pretty darn depressing. It’s all about loving your family but not being able to connect with them or help them; about watching a loved one self-destruct. I think kids can handle and are interested in darker, more real-life topics – it’s more that there are certain adults who can’t.
Paul – Oh, i totally agree with that. TOTALLY.
But I’m talking about the overwhelming number of PG-13 movies that really should be R movies. But the studios are pressured into making cuts (which hurt the films) so that they will be acceptable to younger crowds.
This makes me – an adult – who likes my adult films – angry.
i was SO impressed that the powers-that-be decided to make 8 Mile a rated R film and not PG 13. That was a ballsy move since most of Eminem’s fans are … oh … 13 years old.
But that movie needed to be rated R. If they had toned it down so a younger audience could see it – it would have lost something.
And it made a gazillion dollars in its opening weekend alone.
That movie is not for kids. It’s an adult film. Period. I don’t want my adult films chopped up and edited so that a 15 year old boy can deal with it.
I am a different demographic. I go to the movies ALL the time too.
I say Bring back the serious R-rated films. The MPAA is so fucked up. I’m very glad that Roger Ebert is pretty much on a crusade about this. He has a lot of influence. He misses good old-fashioned rated-R movies, too.
Not that rated G movies can’t be good too. Or PG movies. Fine. I loved The Rookie. Awesome G-rated film.
But there needs to be a place for ADULTS. Rated R movies. That’s where I want to hang out, mainly.
Grownups Rule!
Whilst reviewing The Weather Man Sheila hits a home run: {…}There are those of us in America who like films about GROWN UPS, mkay? Who, yes, LOVE films like Blue Crush (heh heh). But who also want films that are…
Good points.
It’s hard to imagine a movie like ‘A clockwork orange’ being made today..
or what it would be like if it were made.
paul – totally, right?
My god, everytime I mention in passing that DeNiro’s current movies are best seen as a rental, that he isn’t worth $10 anymore—it’s like I spit on the pope or something. You used to seek out a DeNiro movie because he was the best, and he worked with the best, and the film just might be a classic of it’s genre. Now he just cruises through programmers, because he has other priorities in life (Is he the king of TriBeca now?)
It’s nice to know someone else kinda thinks so too.