April 26, 2022 – Nicholas Cage stars in a funny spoof of Nicholas Cage, and the action movies in which he has starred, loaded with references to many of the films he has starred in.

Nicholas Cage (playing himself) is facing fairly heavy financial difficulties at the same time he is having trouble lining up plumb acting roles. Locked out of his high priced apartment because of overdue rent payments, he reluctantly agrees to appear at a party thrown by Javi Gutierrez (played by Pedro Pascal of “Wonder Woman 1984”) for a million dollar fee.

Hanging out with Javi at his impressive Mediterranean island villa, while liberally imbibing drinks and taking hallucinogenic drugs, Cage finds himself unexpectedly bonding with his host, who has similar tastes in movies.

Cage is suddenly scooped up by the CIA. The agent in charge, Vivian (played by Tiffany Haddish of “The Card Counter”) persuades Cage to spy on Javi, a drug lord who the CIA suspects is holding a political prisoner. Cage is unconvinced that Javi is the murderer and kidnapper that the CIA thinks he is, trusting his acting instincts over the CIA's research, but he agrees to spy on Javi anyway.

When Cage is unable to locate the political prisoner at Javi's compound, Cage is asked to extend his stay at the villa, so he agrees to work with Javi on a movie screenplay based on their own budding friendship. When Javi suspects Cage's own family problems with his ex-wife (played by Sharon Horgan of “Game Night”) and daughter Addy (Lily Mo Sheen of “Underworld Evolution”) are interfering with his attempts to finish the screenplay, he has the two women brought to the villa.

When Addy is kidnapped from the villa by another, far more dangerous drug dealer, Javi's cousin Lucas (Paco León) Cage and Javi have to become heroes to save themselves, along with Olivia, Addy, the political kidnap victim and Javi's girlfriend, Gabriela (Alessandra Mastronardi), who are all in danger from Lucas and his minions.

The rescues, car chases and gunfights all become standard Hollywood action sequences. The whole story then becomes a film inside this film that folds back upon itself. The screenplay, by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, is very clever, witty and funny. Reportedly, Cage turned down this role several times before accepting it, just like his character in the movie would have done.

The action sequences at the end, played for laughs, are very similar to some action sequences in recent films (I'm thinking of the Fast and Furious films here) that are supposed to be plausible, but are, in fact, silly. This film manages to just barely stay within the realm of plausibility for the most part, while occasionally crossing the line into silly spoof territory.

Unsurprisingly, Cage is very good playing Cage, but he is nearly upstaged by Pedro Pascal, who is excellent as the drug lord who wants to be free of the life of a drug lord figurehead he has been forced into. Sharon Horgan and Lily Mo Sheen both do a fine job playing Cage's wife and daughter who are both fed up with his over sized ego and his constant need to be the center of attention.

Director Tom Gormican makes good use of de-aging effects so that Cage can interact with his imaginary younger self in dream-like sequences. The younger Cage (also played by Cage) holds his older self in contempt. His younger self tells his older self that his career, and acting skills, are in decline. This represents Cage's own fears, fears he is desperately trying to suppress.

This inner conflict makes Cage's character more sympathetic, like a comic version of Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” he is “out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake ... Nobody dast blame this man.”

This movie reminded me a little of another satire, “This is the End,” which is also about Hollywood actors, playing themselves, facing mortal danger, and showing themselves to be real assholes in the process. This movie is similar to that, except that the two main characters, Nicholas Cage and Javi Gutierrez turn out not to be such bad guys after all, and that difference is one of the things that makes this the better movie.

Some critics seem to think that Cage is not self deprecating enough in this spoof of himself and his career. The trouble is, if Cage had been more self deprecating, then this movie would have become more serious, and that would ruin the comedy of the spoof. After all, a spoof that takes itself too seriously is no longer a spoof. If the screenplay makes the characters too repulsive, they lose their comic appeal.

This movie maintains those delicate balances between realism and fantasy, humor and danger, truth and fiction that make for an effective Hollywood satire. Drama is easy, and comedy is hard. Every year Hollywood churns out a lot of bad comedies and a very few good ones. Those few are to be treasured. This is one of the best. It rates a B+.

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