Time for another preview screening, this time courtesy of StudioCanal… and man, after how much he crushed it last year, I leapt at the chance to check out the next Nicolas Cage flick. When you’ve spent so many years (decades, even) being such a singular talent that you’re just as animated as any one of the roles you’ve taken up, then yeah, why not star in a movie where you’re performing as yourself? Sure, there’s films like The Weather Man, Joe, and the previously-reviewed Pig, which showed certain facets of his real-life persona, but this is as direct as it gets. And the end result, while consciously made up of a lot of familiar parts, is quite mesmerising in that way that only Cage-starring films can manage.
I guess the first question to start with here is, with Cage portraying a hyper-realistic version of himself, what does that mean for Cage? How does he view himself? Well, while there’s aspects of the overworking father in his characterisation, how he views himself (and how the script frames him) is of someone who just loves the absolute fuck out of cinema. There being a running gag to do with The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari is definitely a nice touch, but just watching him describe the art of acting, of performing, of “storytelling and mythmaking”, as he directly describes filmmaking to be, is quite beautiful all on its own.
But that’s how he sees himself; what about the rest of the film’s framing of him? The whole production opens with a scene of a young woman watching Con Air just before she is kidnapped to begin setting up the main plot, and sure enough, there are oodles of references to the Cage canon from then on. Some of it is recent, like Mandy and The Croods 2, some of it is from the pop classics like Face/Off and The Rock, some of it is directly from memes like the Wicker Man remake, and some of it even dips into the more obscure or at least more-forgotten-than-the-rest areas of his catalogue like Guarding Tess.
However, the main film that seems to have influenced the bulk of this film’s tone, story, and treatment of its real-life main character, is Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. Like with Adaptation, Nic is double-cast, this time as both himself and as ‘Nicky Cage’, a hallucinatory vision of his younger self that basically serves as his id a la Michael Keaton in Birdman. Also like Adaptation, the deeper into the plot Nic gets, the more the dialogue starts reflecting and even predicting itself, with him and Pedro Pascal as billionaire/Cage fan-boy Javi discussing a film they want to make together that, oddly enough, describes a lot of the film they’re already in.
I’ll admit that it’s been a while since I last watched Adaptation, and I don’t really remember liking it all that much at the time, but in an attempt to pre-empt my own hindsight, I think I like this film’s approach to it better. For a start, the sense of humour on display is a lot stronger, and director Tom Gormican has enough understanding of his star to know how to get the best out of him, both as a genuine actor and as a larger-than-life personality. Seeing Cage get dragged into a CIA sting operation when he’s just supposed to be attending a fan’s birthday party is nicely surreal, as are the exchanges between him and Nicky, and all the little quips and reactions stack up after a while into some serious wheezing material.
Of course, if this film was just the meme that is Nicolas Cage, there’s only so much it could do with that concept. Which is why it’s both relieving and quite surprising that there’s some serious thought being put into this story and its characters, particularly Cage and Javi. Some of the commentary on modern cinema feels a bit off (much like with Adaptation, commenting on the needless inclusion of action scenes would have more punch if the film didn’t just go along with them afterwards), but in their shared want to make a more mature, character-driven story about the friendship between two men, it taps into a similar vein of emotional honesty as something like Pig.
Where that gets even weirder is that, after a while, the whole ‘Nic Cage the actor starring as Nic Cage the meme’ concept begins to feel like a smokescreen as, honestly, it’s Javi who ends up feeling like the main character here. Cage himself was raring up to take the role himself (because trust Nicolas Cage to find a way to make an already-surreal film idea even more so by playing his own biggest fan), until Pascal was picked out, and with the degree of character growth and nuance that takes place here, I don't blame him. It’s easily the best work I’ve seen from Pascal yet, as the way he portrays this head-over-heels fan leans into some of the expected stereotypes, but still leaves him feeling like his own man who doesn’t really need a flashy superstar to make him stand out.
But for as much as I could extol about the film’s many underlying merits, let’s be honest: It’s a film for Nic Cage fans, and they will most certainly get their fill from how much both he and the film around him revels in that personality. However, even with how much I continue to warm up to Cage’s mannerisms as an actor first and foremost over the last several years, I actually find myself liking him even more after this. Partly because being able to take the piss out of yourself for an entire film, and still making it entertaining for an audience, isn’t something that everyone can do (looking at you, Paul Hogan), but mainly because a lot of the attitudes given about performance, both professional and personal, line up pretty damn well with my own. Once again, Nicolas Cage gave an unpredictable performance by going against what everyone sees as his own brand of unpredictability.
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