Nicolas Cage’s best comedy tops Netflix’s list

In 2022, Nicolas Cage played Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. An exhilarating comedy outing that saw the veteran star emerge as what /Film’s Jacob Hall described as “often nuanced, generally restrained, and painfully and embarrassingly human.” This is a major accomplishment for Cage, who has been known for anything but restraint in the past two decades. Even when he played the lead role The scariest horror movie of 2024 “Longlegs” He played the mysterious and terrifying serial killer with extreme enjoyment. I went into that theater wondering if we’d see some sort of uncharacteristic restraint on Cage’s behalf, but after he started screaming and singing about five minutes into the movie I thought, “No!” Not that his performance was bad, but if you saw him in David Gordon Green’s 2013 film “Joe,” you might also be hoping for more of the older Nic Cage and less of the gonzo performances he’s become known for.

“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” certainly gives Cage room to go off the rails in an attempt to permanently regain some ownership of his facial expressions and line delivery. But his performance in the film clearly had enough nuance to make the film more than just Cage’s off-the-wall nonsense.

Co-written and directed by Tom Gormican, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent sees Cage play a fictionalized version of himself whose acting career is on the decline. The divorced actor reluctantly accepts a million-dollar offer to appear at superfan Javi Gutiérrez’s (Pedro Pascal) birthday party, only to end up in an odyssey that finds him working for the CIA to try to uncover the truth about Gutiérrez and the alleged arms trade/kidnapping of a politician’s daughter. Cage embraces his movie personas to get the job done, making fully meta commentary on the actor’s life and career that also happens to be one of the best comedies of the last few years. Now, the film has landed on Netflix and viewers seem to have moved on to its meta style, sending the film soaring up the charts just a day after its debut.

By the end of its theatrical run, The Unbearable Weight of Colossal Talent had become a hit. 29 million dollars worldwide on a budget of $30 million. It wasn’t a huge financial success, but at least the critics were pleased. The film currently has a critical rating of 87%. Rotten tomatoesbased on 318 reviews. This makes it one of Nic Cage’s highest-rated films of the past five years (as you might expect, he’s been in a lot of them during that time). Even “Longlegs” isn’t as highly rated as Tom Gormican’s action comedy.

As such, it’s good to see a big hit making a big splash on Netflix’s charts, which are often filled with some of the worst dross in the entire streaming industry. (Kevin Hart’s “Lift” took first place on Netflix At this time last year…)

“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” arrived on Netflix on January 16, 2025, and became an instant hit. At the time of writing, the film was ranked fourth on the charts of most watched films in the United States. according to Flex Patrola site that aggregates viewership data from all major streaming platforms, the film debuted at number four on January 17, just one day after arriving on the service. This bodes well for the Nic Cage comedy reaching the top of the charts, perhaps before the week is out.

At the time of writing, A French action thriller that ranks first on Netflix. Rodolphe Lauga’s “Ad Vitam” is basically a French version of “Taken,” which considering the fact that Liam Neeson has been copying his own “Taken” since he starred in the original, seems like he played fair For me. . Unfortunately for Nic Cage and his action comedy, “Ad Vitam” held the top spot in the US for six full days. Not only that, but viewers around the world also sent it to the top of the charts in many other countries, making this a huge challenge for the “unbearable weight of enormous talent” to overcome.

But considering that the film debuted at number four just a day after it hit the service, perhaps this will be the thing that finally topples the Lauga actor. In order to achieve such a feat, however, Cage and co. You will also have to defeat a stronger enemy, the Minion. “Despicable Me” and “Despicable Me 2” currently sit at number two and third on the US Netflix charts respectively, and have been there for some time as well. If “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” can leapfrog these two giants, it will be another win for one of Cage’s best recent efforts. What’s more, it will serve as a nice little reminder that Netflix can offer more than just action movies and traditional blockbusters that would otherwise be forgotten straight to DVD flops – just like when Christopher Nolan’s epic sci-fi film “Interstellar” has skyrocketed on Netflix’s charts To start the new year.