Movie Review: The Weather Man
The Weather Man puts Nicolas Cage in role of a self-centered whiner
Like Joe Btfsplk, that perpetually jinxed schmo in Al Capp's old
"Li'l Abner" comic strip, Nicolas Cage tramps around in The Weather Man with a dark rain cloud constantly thundering over his head.
His character, successful Chicago TV weatherman David Spritz, seems by all rights a guy who should be walking on Cloud Nine.
He makes $240,000 a year for standing in front of a blue screen and reading the weather from a teleprompter. He supplements that income with big fees for personal appearances at civic clubs and social events around town, a perk that often pays off in one-night stands with adoring female fans.
His family is a bit fractured, but on the whole they're a loving, concerned and supportive bunch. And to top it off, he's just made the short list for the weather spot on a network morning show from New York hosted by Bryant Gumbel, a gig that will earn him the national spotlight and a seven-figure salary.
But in keeping with The Weather Man's relentlessly gloomy outlook, Spritz manages to see the dark side of every cloud. In short, he's a pampered, self-centered whiner.
Despite his best efforts, Cage faces an impossible task in making us like or even sympathize with this guy.
The movie is directed by Gore Verbinski, who apparently was
looking for a drastic change of pace from his jaunty blockbuster
adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
And he certainly finds it in this bleakly amusing downer.
As Spritz trudges around Chicago inexplicably being pelted by disgruntled viewers with fast-food products (scoring cunning product placements for Frosties, McD's hot apple pies and Big Gulps), he does struggle with some real-life problems that most people with fewer resources could handle with far more grace.
He's mopey about his divorce from Noreen (Hope Davis in a cold- fish performance), which we see in flashback was caused by his own maddening self-involvement.
He strains to relate to his two children. His son Mike (Nicholas
Hoult, the lad in About a Boy) is in rehab for marijuana use and his counselor (Gil Bellows) shows some very creepy hints of
pedophilia.
His morose, overweight daughter Shelly (Gemmenne De La Pena) is sad and lonely and ridiculed at school and Spritz tries to relate to her by pushing her to take up archery.
But Spritz's biggest woes come in relating to his own father, the great Robert Spritzer (Michael Caine in a marvelously calm and quizzical turn). He's a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author who seems deeply puzzled and disappointed by his son's bad choices in life.
The plodding, meandering story from screenwriter Steve Conrad gets a much needed nudge forward when Spritz learns that his father has terminal cancer.
On the bright side, The Weather Man is invested with an appealingly loopy sense of black humor and is slightly energized by quirky surprises and oddball moments of clear self-reflection on Spritz's part.
Perhaps the kindest interpretation of all this is that The Weather Man finally comes down to a story about simply dealing with life's disappointments and learning to accept the small talents and gifts we are given.
But for Spitz it's a long, slow and torturous path to that plain lesson, and before it's all over you might well find yourself cheering when some lout on the street beans him with a Big Gulp.
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