I remember seeing the lame advertising for this one back in the day, thinking it was a dumb movie where Nic Cage goes a little bit nutty and starts carrying a bow around everywhere, and happily writing it off. But after a bunch of years of people telling me that it’s surprisingly good, I was finally motivated enough to give it a chance. I’m glad I did, because this is one of the most complex, interesting movies I’ve seen in a long while. I’d blame the guy who cut the trailers for doing a bad job of beating the drum for this one, but really, how do you adequately describe this weird ass movie?
Cage is playing a Chicago weather man, one whose life is pretty much in the gutter. His wife has left him, his dad is dying, and people randomly throw fast food items at him on the street. The world as he experiences it is a confusing, aggressive place always looking to knock him on his ass and humiliate him. When there’s counselors trying to molest your son, there’s no way you can keep kids from picking on your chubby daughter, and you find yourself powerless and impotent in every aspect of your life, how do you go on? I’ve never seen a film that has painted a better picture of what a confusing, assaulting experience it is to get out of bed every morning and go out into the world. This movie nails it.
This strange piece of work is giving you a dissertation on camel toes one minute, and then it’s getting poignant the next. It goes inappropriate places, but it always feels honest. Cage’s inner monologue is so scattershot and random, it sounds like my brain in a way no movie narration before ever has. And Cage himself, of course he’s insane and awkward, but finally he’s in a role where his crazy persona accentuates the material rather than takes it over. There are so many layers of ideas here, the tying of corporations to the physical assaults, the fact that Cage is a weather man, the guy who can never get it right, the confusion of the old man in the face of modern crassness... I’m going to be digesting it all for a while. And that’s exactly what I loved about this movie. That and the fact that it’s the only place where you can hear Nic Cage explain to Michael Caine what a Frosty is. Lord, this movie is so dark—we’re all doomed!—but isn’t that kind of funny?
