The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) - Review

You wanna know the weirdest part of the movie? Is that it is trying to be an actual movie. It attempts to tell a heartfelt story about Nic Cage and learning to love his family and not himself, but it is just so generic and dull. It tries to save this by being meta about itself, but it can’t escape the fact that it is still generic and dull despite calling itself out. You can’t be meta and still do what you are making fun of. At least try to be funny the whole time, which this film doesn’t do. With the exception of some references, Nic Cage’s and Pedro Pascal’s performances, and one great scene involving a wall, the film the laughs-per-minute I expected. I didn’t hate it though. It is competent in its filmmaking, especially some great use of reflections. The performances were pretty great as well. There were some glaring plot contrivances but overall it was pretty standard. I just wish the filmmakers weren’t trying so hard to be clever, and instead just trying to have some fun.