Early critical acclaim for Nicolas Cage’s portrayal of himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent has earned the actor his best Rotten Tomatoes score yet.
The meta-comedy currently holds a rare 100 percent on the review-aggregating website following its debut at Austin’s South by Southwest festival. While only 17 critics have weighed in so far, The Hollywood Reporter notes that the RT score is the highest of Cage’s career, which spans 170 movies.
Other revered roles include 2021’s Pig (96 percent), 2002’s Adaptation (90 percent), 1987’s Moonstruck (94 percent), 1997’s Face/Off (92 percent), 1993’s Red Rock West (97 percent, and 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas (91 percent), which earned Cage his sole Academy Award for Best Actor.
According to Variety’s review of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, fans can expect a “commercial comedy that has a delirious good time poking fun at Nicolas Cage, celebrating everything that makes him Nicolas Cage — and, in the end, actually becoming a Nicolas Cage movie.”
Here’s a refresher on the plot from Lionsgate:
“Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the fictionalized version of Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan (Pedro Pascal). Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative (Tiffany Haddish) and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones. With a career built for this very moment, the seminal award-winning actor must take on the role of a lifetime: Nick Cage.”
Initially, Cage adamantly opposed the project. Speaking to THR ahead of its lauded premiere, Cage, said, “I turned it down three or four times, I wanted no part of it.”
“But when I got [writer-director Tom Gormican’s] letter, then I thought, ‘OK, he’s not just trying to mock so-called Nick Cage; there is a real interest in some of the earlier work.’ His tone was more of a celebration of some of [the actor’s iconic onscreen] moments — like being at the bottom of the pool in Leaving Las Vegas or [using] the gold guns in Face/Off.”
Cage also revealed the scene that got him interested didn’t make the final cut.
“It was a sequence where the Nick Cage character goes into a series of vignettes that are all stylized in the German expressionism of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. So there was a sequence in black and white that was a Gone in 60 Seconds race in a Mustang, there was the Leaving Las Vegas character in a hotel room. It was fun to make and cool to look at. Ultimately, the studio decided it was too far out for audiences.”
Perhaps it’ll make The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent director’s cut.