Is Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent a great movie? Probably no. But it is fascinating to watch Nicolas Cage explore some of his potential fears and insecurities through this meta-fictional role – the fear of being a terrible father and not being there for his children, of working too much and being too desperate for each role that comes along, of working so much that he’s no longer a star, of being too self-absorbed to notice his family, of becoming irrelevant… The scenes in which Cage talks with himself are delightful throwbacks to his past work and provide moments of over-the-top reflection on the ways that artists – and especially actors – are in constant battle with their own egos. Pedro Pascal is wonderful and gives the film an emotional grounding that matches Cage’s (at times) manic energy. The meta-reflection on Hollywood, the kind of movies that are financed and seen right now, and the ways in which the story we watch unfolds to becomes fictionalized and wraps in on itself, is all a treat to watch. Perhaps less successful is the way the action-movie and spy plot take the weirdness and loveliness of the film’s concept and flattens it out, making it into something altogether more conventional and traditional than it could have been. Nevertheless, it’s still incredibly fun and has two actors who seem to enjoy the work of playing off of one another – but it had the potential to be so much more.