So much average

A Disappointing Continuation

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I got this film second hand in a charity shop and thought I'd give it a go. A comedy to brighten your day sounded great. Sat down to watch it with my partner and a friend; part way through my friend turned and asked "Is it funny yet?".An hour in to the film we'd laughed once. Just once. On top of that it was deeply depressing, full of unlovable characters and Michael Caine doing an American accent so awful only Jason Statham has done worse.The marriage was horrible, Gil Bellows' character was foul and you knew almost immediately what was going to happen with him and the son; Cage's character is tragic; his daughter is sad and the camel toe jokes horribly misplaced (I wasn't offended, just appalled); the name calling between Cage and his wife's lover school ground stuff and pathetic.So we switched it off and watched Naked Gun to cheer us up.If this is comedy I'd never want to see a funny film again.Just dreadful. Unbelievably awful. Avoid.

Nicolas Cage has always been a wonder to me. Nicolas Cage has always played the same dead-pan character---same as Kevin Costner. I have been fearing that a movie starring Nick (and same with Kevin -- at least Waterworld had action) would come out and be as bland as his acting; now it has. This biography of a normal, uneventful, topically messed-up life of the average, albeit rich, human being is just the kind of movie that would expose Nick's underachieving style of acting that underrates the talent an actor of his status has.The plot is about a man finding himself by overcoming the burden of his wants for the burden of his needs. The writers missed two very crucial takes that would have clearly shown his former life was going to have meaning without him by having the deer hunt with his daughter that would be her "rock" (meaning) during her bland life and David's Father last scene in the car telling him, "it's not just wind, it's the paper you write on while telling your stories to your reader's. David, you and I are the same-- we tell fiction to an eager audience that cares."If I wanted to view this movie again, I would become a psychiatrist or an attorney for which this movie must be a complete bore.

This film has it all! A pancake-laden Cage pulling lemon-face for two hours! Existential angst oozing from every pore! Morose youth, their vivacity subsumed in a clumsy counterpoint of the mid life crises of the protagonists! Yes, there is is, the dignified terminal illness! Aaah, a rapid flash of bouncing tit-flesh, a brief moment of joie de vivre, rapidly and permanently stifled by the crushing burden of first world ennui.Let's be clear, if you want stylish French verite, watch a French film.The Hollywood version is a painfully clumsy pastiche, stumbling from cliché to cliché in a rote, barely aware fashion.This is a dire, dreadful, awful, miserable, grind of a film, with no redeeming features. A critics' dream, the doyen of the Eurphophile intelligentsia: you absolutely must watch this movie if your predilection is for fronting a pretence that the pedestrian can become profound through frenzied beard stroking and expostulation.

Nicholas cage plays the same character time after time. He is alone; he once had a nice family; his children are weird or dysfunctional. He has done something in the past that has left him out there on an island of hopelessness and depression. He also manages to get back to the surface and begin to live. He has acuity and knows that he has screwed up. He is ready for redemption but has to find the way there. In this one he is a very talented guy who has on-screen charisma but has been relegated to doing the weather on television. He must be quite popular because people recognize him enough to pelt him with garbage. We know that at some point the universe will right itself and allow him to have his day. The relationship with his sad daughter is what this film is really about, and there is a bittersweet reclamation that takes place. As with most Cage films, there will be hope, but it is at a great personal price.