PLOT: A Chicago TV weatherman struggles to get his life together as he endures insults from the public, rebukes from his stern father and the pain of his ruined marriage.
As a mood piece, The Weather Man is mostly melancholy. As a comedy, Gore Verbinski's film offers laughs that are mean and hard-earned.
As a character study, this contemporary drama's protagonist is a disappontment to his family and also to the audience.
Yet, as a showcase for performance, Nicolas Cage once again triumphs. His specialty is channelling emotional pain and personal anguish and making it interesting, as he did so brilliantly as twin brothers in Adaptation.
The Weather Man is a lesser film. But it is still a pleasure to watch Cage, with his beaten face, goofy hair and sad eyes, bring an Everyman to the screen. This is far more interesting than Cage's roles as an action hero.
Written by Steve Conrad and set in Chicago and New York, The Weather Man is a film about a TV weatherman who is looking to leap from the regional stage in Chicago to the big time, big salary fame of working with Bryant Gumbel on a national show out of New York (Gumbel makes a cameo when Cage's character auditions).
As his career looks to be heating up, our hero's personal life is turning as frigid as the bleak Chicago winters depicted throughout most of the film. We hear the details from Cage's sometimes oppressive narration.
His wife (Hope Davis) has dumped him and is dating another man (Michael Rispoli). His teen son (Nicholas Hoult) has drug issues and is vulnerable prey for his creepy counsellor (Gil Bellows). His daughter (Gemmenne de la Pena) is overweight, sad and clueless.
Most of all, Cage's father (Michael Caine) is a Pultizer Prize-winning writer who is disapproving of his son's lightweight career and of his miserable failures as a family man.
To underscore that minor point about career status -- and to overplay it to extremes -- the film shows run-ins Cage has with Chicagoans. Some boors pelt him with fast food because they hate his weather forecasts, or the weather. Some twits turn on him when he refuses to play the celebrity game.
More captivating than the overdone joke is the complexity of the relationship Cage has with Caine (whose excellent performance is as dry as parchment).
One of the problems with this kind of movie is capturing and then holding the audience's attention when most of the characters deserve what they get.
For example, that marriage should be over. It was doomed. In flashbacks, we see how incompatible they were, Cage because he acted like a horse's ass, Davis because she turned into a shrew. They triggered the worst in each other.
As for the intergenerational problems, Cage's awkward relationships with his children are so real they are wrenching to witness. But the movie provides no insight.
Then there is the archery metaphor. Cage takes up the sport, first because he is trying to interest his aimless daughter in something, then because he needs an outlet for his aggression. Okay, I'll buy that, but not in the way it is presented in the surreal trailer that makes The Weather Man look more like a revenge fantasy than a chronicle of life.
This turns out to be an odd duck for Verbinski to direct, especially as a serious assignment between episodes in his fun-loving Pirates Of The Caribbean series. Perhaps he wanted a down beat between the up notes. But at least we have Nicolas Cage to marvel over.
BOTTOM LINE: Despite a trailer that makes this look like a quirky comedy, Gore Verbinski's film is more of a dour drama. But Nicolas Cage is excellent, again, as a fractured man suffering the slings and arrows.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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