In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent we have Nicolas Cage playing Nicolas Cage in a film where Nicolas Cage learns what it means to be Nicolas Cage. Oh, and he’s helped along the way by the odd pep talk by… you guessed it! Nicolas Cage.

It’s an intriguing premise and one that I’ve been looking forward to seeing since I first heard of it back in 2020. And while it doesn’t quite make the most of it’s set up, there is plenty here to enjoy.

The film excels in two areas.

Firstly, at no point in the film did I ever start to disbelieve that Nick Cage could find himself in this kind of situation. The premise works. It is over the top, fun, and ridiculous. Much like the public persona Cage himself puts out.

In the same way that Being John Malkovich could only have worked with John Malkovich, it feels like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent could only ever have been written for Nicolas Cage. Love him or loath him he has the charisma, and an outlandish performative style, that makes him the only choice for a film such as this.

The other area in which it excels is the relationship between Cage and Pedro Pascals Javi. The two have a natural chemistry which makes any scene featuring the two of them a joy to watch. The LSD sequence in particular is laugh out loud funny, and provides enough laughs to justify the film on it’s own.

Where the film starts to fall down however is the CIA plot line. It is not fleshed out enough to make a compelling political thriller, the characters - outside of Cage and Javi - are not well drawn enough to make you care what happens to them, and the action, while solidly put together, is not visually interesting enough to hold your attention.

It can’t help but feel like two separate films have been mashed together. A process which only served to sanitise both and improve neither.

Outside of the main cast we have Sharon Horgan and Lily Mo Sheen as Cage’s ex-wife (Olivia) and daughter (Addy) respectively, who do good work with the little they are given to do, and Alessandra Mastronardi as Gabriella who does good work with even less to do. All three have some good lines, and deliver them well, but ultimately feel forgettable in comparison to Cage and Pascal.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, while let down slightly by the action sub plots, is dumb fun in all of the right ways, it is funny, in places sweet, and is a fantastic showcase for Nicolas Cage to do what he does best

Nicolas Cage is back, folks. Not that he ever went anywhere.