By Gerald Peary

Considering his loopy career and also his bumpy off-screen life, Nicolas Cage seems neither ashamed nor apologetic about how it’s all gone down.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, directed by Tom Gormican. Screening at Coolidge Corner, Landmark Embassy, and Boston Common.

Nicolas Cage in a scene from The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Nicolas Cage sprang out of the gate as a spry teenage actor in Valley Girl (1982), then performed in three successful films — Rumble Fish (1983), The Cotton Club (1984), and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) — for his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola. He starred later in such appreciated movies as the mainstream hit, Moonstruck (1987), and cult favorites Birdy (1984) Raising Arizona (1987), Wild at Heart (1990), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), and Adaptation (2002). For action fans: The Rock (1996) and Face/Off (1997).

A young man with an extremely impressive dossier. But in the last 20 years, Cage has gone very weird and, for most people, wildly off the rail. His A-list career gave way to a glut of C-level, campy programmers. His showy, eccentric acting devolved into unhinged histrionics. Granted, he was properly subdued in one interesting independent film, Pig (2021). But otherwise? Was it for a psychological need to be before a camera or from a necessity to pay his bills (four divorces, two children) that bad movies just kept pouring out? In 2019, for example, Cage appeared in a backbreaking six pictures. Except for a passable “B” horror, The Colour Out of Space, has anyone heard of any of these titles? A Score to Settle, Running With the Devil, Kill Chain, Primal, Grand Isle. Where do they even play? On Southeast Asian cable, perhaps?

Considering his loopy career and also his bumpy off-screen life, Cage seems neither ashamed nor apologetic about how it’s all gone down. He looks into the cracked mirror with grace and humor in his loosely autobiographical new film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. He embraces playing himself, Nicolas Cage, or a meta-version of himself, in this parody comedy adventure film directed by Tom Gormican. It’s a wise professional decision to be such a good sport in spoofing his personal and professional life. For once, this is a Cage movie well worth viewing. He’s pretty great in it, charming and very very funny.

The Cage we see — anxious, neurotic, 50-something — is at a crossroads, professionally and privately. He’s a screw-up as a divorced husband and clueless as a father. He takes over his daughter’s 16^th birthday party, performing at the piano and embarrassing her before her friends with gushy stories. As for his career, movie roles have run dry, and so has Cage’s money. The Unbearable Weight begins in desperation, with Cage in the face of the Halloween remake director David Gordon Green (as himself), begging to be cast in a New England-set crime movie. The filmmaker is unmoved, even when Cage tries to win him over with a mobster speech delivered with a ripe Boston accent.

A dejected Cage has little choice but to take up an offer he’d love to refuse: for a payday, he must travel to Europe and appear as a live guest at a birthday party. The Unbearable Weight jumps to a villa on the Spanish coast and, soon, to Cage’s unexpected rejuvenation. His host, Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) turns out to be a genial superfan, who lists Face/Off as his favorite movie of all time. He has put together a private museum of Cage memorabilia, including a Cage waxen figure. Quickly, they are the best of friends, and Cage is actually…relaxed. They work on a screenplay together, something for Cage to star in. But all good things…Cage is contacted by the CIA and informed that his pal Javi is actually a Mafia chieftain and a lowly kidnapper. Could this possibly be true of the man who adores Cage in Guarding Tess (1994) and as a voice in The Croods (2013)? Is he evil or isn’t he?

In discussing their screenplay, both writers, Javi and Nic, acknowledge the need to throw in some action scenes to keep the crowd interested. Of course, that’s what happens with Unbearable Weight, which, in its last third, turns to espionage, car chases, and a manipulative sentimental ending. Some of this mish-mash is amusing: the homoerotic subtext of buddy-buddy friendships is made overt when Javi and Nicolas exchange shoes with each other. Mostly, the joke set-up goes flat and the movie becomes just another numbing, by-rote adventure film. Still, there’s the first two thirds of the movie to cherish, and a genuine Nicolas Cage comeback to heartily cheer.

Gerald Peary is a Professor Emeritus at Suffolk University, Boston, ex-curator of the Boston University Cinematheque, and the general editor of the “Conversations with Filmmakers” series from the University Press of Mississippi. A critic for the late Boston Phoenix, he is the author of nine books on cinema, writer-director of the documentaries For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism and Archie’s Betty, and a featured actor in the 2013 independent narrative Computer Chess. His latest feature documentary, The Rabbi Goes West, co-directed by Amy Geller, has played at film festivals around the world.