It’s rare that a Nicolas Cage movie gets talked about in the same sentence as Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Seven Samurai (1956), The Maltese Falcon (1941), or The Philadelphia Story (1940). But Tom Gormican’s new action-comedy, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent—which just made its world premiere at SXSW—is already getting the kind of laudatory reviews that some filmmakers work their entire lives for. So much so that the movie currently holds a rare 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, as The Hollywood Reporter notes.
“As there are only 15 reviews so far, it’s probable that the score will dip as more are added,” THR’s James Hibberd writes. “But for now, it’s the highest-scoring film of the 170 Cage-credited titles on the site.” It’s also one of the few films to ever hold a perfect score on the review site, and certainly one of the more recent. For the most part, members of RT’s Perfect Score Club date back to the mid-1950s or earlier. One exception is Debra Granik’s 2018 film Leave No Trace, starring Ben Foster. Even with nearly 250 critic’s reviews, the movie has managed to maintain its 100 percent rating.
In 2021, all hell broke loose when film critic Eddie Harrison panned Paul King’s much-beloved Paddington 2 (2017), and brought its aggregated score down to a 99 percent (writer’s note: yes, I’m still pissed!). The same thing happened to Citizen Kane just one month earlier, when a negative review of the movie written in 1941 was discovered and tabulated into the movie’s rating.
Cage’s latest film sees the actor playing a fictionalized version of himself. Desperate for cash, he agrees to make a $1 million paid appearance at the birthday party of a billionaire (Pedro Pascal) who also happens to be a drug lord. But—surprise!—Cage is also working with the CIA in order to help take the kingpin down.
As for any similarities between Nic Cage, Oscar-Winning Actor and Nick Cage, Actor In a Very Meta New Movie, the real Cage says there are virtually none. For one, he doesn’t use much profanity in real life, unlike his big-screen counterpart. And, as he recently told The Hollywood Reporter, the real Cage typically enjoys “a lot of quiet moments at home with just my cat, reading.” Which is a movie we’d also probably watch.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
