Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Sleep Study Patients Have The Dream Job

2024-Mar-24

A review I could make about any movie starring Nicolas Cage would ultimately become a review of Nicolas Cage himself. Said review will almost always point to ‘excellent’ or possibly a mention as to just how Nicolas Cage was inhibited from delivering a solid performance. The man is a hell of an actor. We all know he can play almost any role with gusto, which is what I’m looking for in a leading man.

Acting as a craft is not one I can readily critique. What I look for in ‘good’ acting is I suppose the same thing I would look for when judging an undercover cop, not a poet. I have more workmanlike expectations of an actor. Acting that hides the actor is what I would call good acting. An actor who has mastered the technique of eliciting a tearful response from the audience could be the hallmark of the kind of actor I find amusing. If that is their one trick and I find myself noticing that this actor is using tricks to fool an audience into feeling something, then that trick can really only work once.

Nicolas Cage, a very bombastic character in my head, waltzed through his role in Dream Scenario with the awkward grace expected by the protagonist of this movie’s script. I do not recall his role’s name, but I would guess it was something blandly Middle-American, such as Stephen Anderson. The character was as inoffensive as his namesake. Not a bad guy and definitely not a memorable guy. A nice guy that might rely too much on being nice as a personality trait. His profession is that of a tenured biology professor at some sort of east coast school.

I don’t care to go too deep into describing who Nicolas Cage is portraying or what the plot of the movie is about. It’s a great movie that could have been great without the presence of Nicolas Cage, but he was there to expertly anchor this personal yet universalizing story. That sure sounds like high brow academic praise of some arts performance, doesn't it?

My penchant for Nicolas Cage did not start from watching him restrain himself to adhere to the whims of a director or screenplay. My first brushes with this actor that I found to be incredibly satisfying were not in films with him playing mild mannered academics. The Nicolas Cage I grew up with was wildly dynamic with his acting choices, playing punks, hustlers, sleazy guys, con artists, or sometimes a straight laced guy who can yell with aplomb. He’d go up and down with his voice, or dip into vocal impersonations of Hollywood stars. He explored the gamut of what an actor can do on screen, but usually toward the loud rather than the nuanced.

Knowing that he can exude a much more wild acting style and still blend into a boring suburban nobody is why I think Nicolas Cage is more than just himself pushing his gusto all over the screen. This is not the first time I have seen him not rely on his up and down acting techniques. Nicolas Cage is always handing in a variety of roles and they’re not all using the same tricks.

In the mid 90s he made an incredible leap from gutsy dramatic actor to ludicrous action star. At that time I was a child that more or less constrained my movie watching to action or animated features. Every other movie genre only came in because those two options were not always available. The idea of Nicolas Cage with muscles seemed weird at the time. The reason as to why could not be stated then and I find it difficult now too. Dolph Lundgren or Van Damme with muscles made unspoken sense. A sometimes high brow actor like Nicolas Cage with muscles just as big hinted at ridiculousness.

Weirdness aside, I found myself enjoying it more as I aged and took the premise of action movies less seriously. He had the acting chops to pull together action movies that ballooned into high budget absurdity. A martial artist turned actor would likely not have had the acting tools to be the lead of these new types of action movies that would often relish in how ridiculous the action was rather than play it classically serious.

He is not just the hammy actor that plays to my base sensibilities of acting, he is not just a skilled chameleon able to become a separate person, he is also a great guy for shooting a henchman then saying a one liner related to how the shooting was accomplished.

Is there any role this man cannot do? I suppose I have not heard him play any foreigners. That is somewhat gauche these days. I think I’ve seen well over fifty of his movies yet I don’t recall a time he used a foreign accent extensively. Plenty of Anglo type accents within the Americas. His southern drawl has been attempted on a few occasions and I suppose I remember some stretched out New York or Boston accents in his 80s stuff. Once he got up and running as the guy who whispers and shouts in the same sentence he never stretched in that direction. I suppose if there is one acting deficiency I can think of towards Nicolas Cage is the lack of ludicrous accents. I bet he’d make a great Italian count!

Besides Nic Cage, that whole Dream Scenario was a fine movie. Under two hours so it gets extra praise for not indulging. Sure I got misgivings. It ain’t in Nicolas Cage’s top ten best. Maybe top twenty. Maybe.