Nicolas Cage's best comedy has blown up the Netflix charts

in 2022 Nicolas Cage played Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. a delightful comedy outing in which the veteran star came across what /Film's Jacob Hall described as “often nuanced, generally restrained and painfully awkwardly human.” That's quite a feat for Cage, who has been known for anything but restraint over the past couple of decades. Even when he was filming The scariest horror movie of 2024 “Longlegs” he played the mysterious and creepy serial killer with excessive relish. I went into that theater wondering if we might see some uncharacteristic restraint on Cage's part, but after he started screaming and singing five minutes into the movie, I thought, “No!” Not to say his performance was bad, but if you saw him in David Gordon Green's 2013 Joe, you might as well have expected the quietly relentless older Nic Cage performances and less of the gonzo performances he's become known for.

The “unbearable weight of sheer talent” certainly gives Cage a chance to go off the rails as he tries to reclaim ownership of his ever-beloved facial expressions and lines. But his performance in the film clearly had enough nuance to make it more than just another Cage folly.

In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, co-written and directed by Tom Gormican, Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself whose acting career is on the rocks. The divorced actor begrudgingly accepts a $1 million offer to attend superfan Javi Gutierrez's (Pedro Pascal) birthday party only to embark on an odyssey as he works for the CIA to try and uncover the truth about Gutierrez and his alleged arms deal/kidnapping of a politician's daughter. Cage uses his film roles to get the job done, providing complete meta commentary on the actor's own life and career in what is also one of the best comedies of recent years. Now the film has landed on Netflix, and audiences seem to have taken to its meta style, sending the film up the charts just a day after its debut.

By the end of the theatrical performance, the film “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” had managed to drag on. 29 million dollars worldwide on a $30 million budget. Not exactly a huge financial success, but at least the critics were satisfied. The film currently has an 87% critic rating Rotten tomatoesbased on 318 reviews. This makes it one of Nic Cage's highest-rated films of the past five years (and, as you'd expect, he's been in a lot of them in that time). Even “Long Legs” is not as highly regarded as Tom Gormican's action comedy.

So it's nice to see Netflix doing well in the charts that are so often filled with the worst streaming slag in the entire streaming world. (Kevin Hart's 'Lift' was number one on Netflix this time last year…)

“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” appeared on Netflix on January 16, 2025 and proved to be an instant hit. At the time of writing, the film sits at number four on the charts for the most watched films in the US. According to FlixPatrolsite that aggregates viewing data from all major streaming platforms, the film debuted at number four on January 17, just a day after it hit the service. It bodes well for the Nic Cage comedy to reach the top of the charts, possibly before the end of the week.

At the time of writing The French action thriller is number one on Netflix. Directed by Rodolfo Lauga, Ad Vitam is essentially a French version of Taken, which, given the fact that Liam Neeson has been doing his own Taken outtakes since he starred in the original, seems fair game to me. . Unfortunately for Nic Cage and his action-comedy Ad Vita, it's been No. 1 in the US for six days. Not only that, but audiences around the world have sent it to the top of the charts in various other countries, making this film 'The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent' a big challenge.

But considering that the film debuted in fourth place only a day after its release, it may finally dethrone the Lauga actor. However, to accomplish such a feat, Cage and co. you will also have to overcome a possibly even stronger enemy in the form of Minions. “Despicable Me” and “Despicable Me 2” currently sit in second and third place on Netflix's US charts, respectively, and they've been there for a while, too. If The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent can beat these two jumpers, it will be another win for one of Cage's best modern efforts. Plus, it'll be a nice little reminder that Netflix can serve up more than just actors and movies that would otherwise be forgotten about straight-to-DVD — just like then Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic “Interstellar” soared up the Netflix charts to start the new year.