The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent: A cheeky romp

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for drug use, sexual candor, violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.22.22

Well, color me surprised.

 

Nicolas Cage has been turning out mostly violent stinkers like a man determined to secure a permanent place in the Razzie Hall of Shame: 39 films (!) in the past decade alone — the pandemic didn’t slow him down a jot — and that’s not including the four animated films to which he lent his voice.

 

Although initially wary of collaborating on a movie script with a newbie writer, Nick
(Nicolas Cage, right) finds it hard to resist Javi Gutierrez's (Pedro Pascal) enthusiasm.

Drive Angry, Rage, The Runner, Dog Eat Dog, Army of One, Vengeance, The Humanity Bureau, Between Worlds, Running with the Devil, Prisoners of the Ghostland … the list seems endless. (Honestly, I question whether some of them even achieved cable/satellite/streaming release; they certainly never played in theaters.)

I therefore approached this one with a gimlet eye, particularly since the exploitative advertising campaign gave no reason for optimism.

 

So much for assumptions.

 

Director Tom Gormican’s send-up of Cage — his career, reputation, fan base and constant financial peril — isn’t merely impudently self-referential; this audacious script, co-written by Gormican and Kevin Etten, is the most meta of meta. It’s a cheerfully deranged valentine to the “Cult of Cage,” those touchingly loyal fans — apparently they are legion — willing to forgive even his most deplorable turkeys.

 

This one’s no turkey. It’s actually quite entertaining, and frequently hilarious.

 

We meet Nick Cage (Cage, of course) down on his cinematic luck, desperate for the comeback potential of a film role championed by his perpetually harassed agent, Richard Fink (Neil Patrick Harris). Nick’s personal life is a disaster; his narcissistic megalomania has poisoned his relationships with ex-wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan) and teenage daughter Addy (Lily Sheen).

 

Cage is hard to watch, during these early scenes; his effort to upstage Addy’s 16th birthday is particularly cringe-worthy. He’s also prone to arguing with a younger version of himself — think lanky, long-haired, bomber jacket-garbed Cage Mark 1, from the Raising Arizona/Wild at Heart era — who personifies his worst characteristics.

 

And yes: This display of dual Cages is a deliberate nod to the peculiar twin roles he played in Adaptation. Indeed, identifying all the riffs from Cage’s (better known) earlier films quickly becomes part of the game; some are name-checked, some are film clips being watched by various characters, some are replayed scenes (the one from Leaving Las Vegas being the most obvious).

Everybody's Talking about Jamie: As well they should!

Everybody's Talking about Jamie (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for thematic elements, suggestive content and fleeting profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.17.21

Director Jonathan Butterell’s thoroughly delightful blend of Billy Elliot and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is based on the Dan Gillespie Sells/Tom MacRae 2017 stage musical of the same name, which in turn is adapted from the 2011 television documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, which profiled Jamie Campbell.

 

After Jamie (Max Harwood) gets a bit too aggressive with an eyebrow pencil, his
best friend Pritti (Lauren Patel) graciously does her best to repair the damage.

(Got all that?)

MacRae handles the script here, and Butterell also directed the play’s original Sheffield and West End productions, so there’s no question this film is faithful to their original vision. That’s important, given the subject’s sensitivity, which Butterell treats with respect. The result is joyous, poignant, uplifting, frequently amusing and — at times — emotionally shattering.

 

Which you’d expect, given that we’re talking about a teenager who wanted to come out as a drag queen, in a conservative, working-class community in Sheffield, England.

 

Butterell’s film is powered by an incandescent performance by star Max Harwood, in a frankly amazing acting and singing debut. There’s often something special about a talented actor’s debut screen role: Absent expectations and preconceived notions — it’s not as if we know anything about Harwood — it’s easier to embrace the notion that he is this character.

 

And he has absolutely no trouble handling choreographer Kate Prince’s inventively staged song-and-dance numbers. The first one — “And You Don’t Even Know It,” which establishes Jamie’s personality, hopes and dreams — is a true stunner.

 

Indeed, Butterell and all concerned have “opened up” the stage production quite imaginatively.

 

Musicals are, by nature, strange beasts; some seamlessly integrate the songs and production numbers into the narrative — Cabaret, most famously — while others simply interrupt the story. Jamie is one of the latter, although — to its credit — all the songs are so heartfelt, poignant or flamboyantly fun, that it’s easy to succumb to the film’s spirit.

 

With his dyed platinum blond pixie cut, gaudy accoutrements added to the mandated uniform, and aggressively frank personality, Jamie New (Harwood) is quite a presence at Mayfield High School. That rarely works in his favor, and he’s often targeted by mocking lads egged on by the sneering Dean (Samuel Bottomley).

 

He has one friend: the diminutive Pritti Pasha (Lauren Patel, in an equally strong acting debut), a studious Muslim who plans to become a doctor. She’s Jamie’s exact opposite: a shy, conservative girl who wouldn’t dream of wearing makeup, and hates being the center of attention. But — even though Butterell and MacRae don’t go there much — the hijab clearly has made her an outcast in this community, so of course she understands and sympathizes with Jamie’s isolation.

 

Despite the fact that it’s his own fault, given the way he behaves. Indeed, she’s his second staunchest advocate, forever encouraging him to embrace his ambitions, to “stop waiting for permission to be you.”

 

Military Wives: Be sure to enlist!

Military Wives (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.5.20

Director Peter Cattaneo makes adorable feel-good films that cleverly blend light, character-driven humor with social commentary that often pokes at the British class system.

Lisa (Sharon Horgan, left) can't quite believe it when, instead of just allowing their group
to sing a song, Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas) insists on beginning with high-falutin'
vocal exercises.

He put himself on the map with 1997’s The Full Monty, and if his subsequent films didn’t live up to that big-screen debut — 2001’s Lucky Break and 2008’s The Rocker — it’s only because he set the bar so high the first time.

Well, Military Wives — available via Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms — hits all the markers that made Monty so entertaining. The cherry on top is that Rosanne Flynn and Rachel Tunnard’s script is inspired by deeply moving actual events: a poignant (and well-timed) reminder that people from disparate backgrounds can accomplish marvelous things when working together.

The setting is 2010, at England’s (fictitious) Flitcroft military base. (Production actually took place at North Yorkshire’s Catterick Garrison, the world’s largest British army base.) The ongoing war in Afghanistan has just entered the “surge” phase, with increasing numbers of Allied troops being deployed overseas; this includes many of the active-duty soldiers at Flitcroft.

Their wives and girlfriends, left behind on base, have limited options for distracting themselves from worst-case fears. Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas), wife of the company commander, decides to take a more active hand in gathering the women for group activities. By doing so, she steps on the toes of Lisa (Sharon Horgan), the base’s newly appointed Social Committee chair.

They’re a classic case of oil and water, destined never to mix. Kate is a condescending, high-minded aristocrat who throws her status around; Scott Thomas delivers just the right note of smug entitlement. The earthier, working-class Lisa has long enjoyed being “just one of the girls,” and she’s not about to let her new “promotion” get in the way of that.

Kate wants to organize productive, formally structured activities; Lisa — and the rest of the women — prefer informal morning coffee klatches and wine-fueled evenings.