Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate)

This tailor-made project for Nicolas Cage, one with the marquee busting title The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, doubles as a retread and tribute to the Oscar-winning actor’s 1990s action movies, which, some would argue, don’t rank high among his most daring or memorable work. Since his days primarily fronting actioners, he has since solidified his singular brand of off-center unpredictability. Compared to Mandy or Dog Eat Dog, this entry in the Cage canon comes across as a staid step back.

However, if it does nothing else, the movie salutes his wildly varied 41-year career. And when I say the script was written for him, it’s because Cage plays Nicolas Cage, the same star of Valley Girl, Moonstruck, Wild at Heart, Face/Off, and Guarding Tess, among the many titles name-dropped. There’s also a shout-out to the supposedly “underappreciated” Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a sop to the art-house audience. Unbearable, though, is geared to fans of Cage circa 1998—if you want subtlety, watch last year’s Pig. 

Hard-luck Nicolas, out of fashion and out of work, goes through life plotting his next career move and grabbing the center of attention at the drop of a hat, even performing a badly out-of-tune impromptu song at his horrified daughter’s 16th birthday party while the Scolding and Exasperated Ex-Wife (Sharon Horgan, in a nearly thankless role) scowls. Whenever his confidence needs a boost, his 1983-era alter ego, a leather jacket-clad Nicky, strokes Nicolas’s ego: “You’re a movie star, and don’t you forget it.” (The de-aging effects here are more subtle than in all of The Irishman’s wizardry.) Once again, Cage throws himself, body and soul, in playing the fool, whether as himself or as his onscreen persona, which in this case are one and the same.

Hugely in debt, Nicolas agrees to fly to Mallorca for the birthday party of billionaire and number one fan, Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal, the film’s secret weapon), and to pocket one million dollars. Upon arrival on the island, Cage is greeted by a CIA operative posing as a gushing fan (an underused Tiffany Haddish), who, while grabbing an unasked hug from the movie star, plants a trailing device in his pocket. By enlisting Nicolas as a spy, she and her colleague hope to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Catalan politician; they believe she’s being held in fortress-like palazzo belonging to Javi, a reputed crime lord.

Except for the abundant meta references to Cage’s chameleon-like career, the script needs some more sprucing up to break out of its mold. You could be watching almost any straight-to-streaming action movie. Recall of its plot will be Gone in 60 Seconds—a crack which is not completely out of line with the movie’s self-referential sense of humor. 

Fortunately, the film never takes itself too seriously, and the off-the-cuff chemistry between Cage and Pascal is warm and breezy, especially when Javi sheds his cool veneer and lets his giddy fanboy run free—Javi, like everyone it seems in Los Angeles, has written a screenplay, one expressly for Nicolas. The two middle-aged men revert to their teens as though sharing a secret language, drawing from the movies of the real-life Cage (also one of this film’s producers).

However, not all is fun and games: the cat-and-mouse derring-do turn too violent for a harmless romp (don’t get too attached to some characters), and the humor runs out of steam and snap. For a comeback or rejoinder, nearly everyone resorts to throwing F-bombs aplenty in lieu of wit, though Mark Isham’s jaunty score for guitar and violin adds a touch of class. (Perhaps they were not fans of Cage, but there were at least a half a dozen walkouts at the preview screening.)