It is rare to see film critics universally agree on anything. Certainly both critics and audience tend to agree if a movie is generally good or generally bad, but there are always outliers. There are always those for whom a movie most people love doesn’t work, or those who find something truly wonderful in a project most people forget about. But when it comes to the new Nicolas Cage movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, critics are truly in agreement. Every single review of the movie is positive, giving the film a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, at least so far.
As of this writing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent has 24 reviews posted to Rotten Tomatoes, and all of them are of the “Fresh” variety. That’s not to say that every review is stellar; the movie has an average score of 7.5 out of ten, which is solid and nothing to sneeze at. But it certainly indicates that the movie is good, albeit not perfect. Although whatever flaws the movie might have are not enough to stop critics from recommending it.
There will be a lot more reviews to come, Nicolas Cage’s new movie, in which he plays a fictionalized version of Nic Cage, is still two weeks away from release, and so it seems more than likely that this movie won’t be able to keep its 100% score forever, there will likely be somebody who doesn’t care for it at some point. Even movies like Paddington 2 weren’t able to keep their perfect score forever. Only Toy Story 2 has been able to retain a 100% score among major theatrical theatrical releases.
Still, the strong positive reviews out of the gate are good news for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. A movie that stars Nicolas Cage, playing a version of Nicolas Cage that isn’t that far from many of the characters he’s played on screen, is the sort of meta humor that could have very easily become too self indulgent and fallen flat, but it seems that critics don’t think so. They largely agree with co-start Pedro Pascal who dropped an f-bomb in describing the film’s humor.
At the end of the day critics’ opinions are just opinions and are no guarantee that everybody else will feel the same way about a movie. There have been plenty of movies that critics thought were bad that audiences clearly loved based on box office results. At the same time, when critics do love a movie, audiences tend to also love it, so The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent may be in for a solid box office response, which will be great considering that many films are still struggling in that regard. A lot of Nic Cage fans are going to want to check this one out, even if Nic Cage himself won’t be watching it. The movie arrives in theaters April 22.
