The Weather Man

The new movie, "The Weather Man" is a sort of reimagining of 1999's "American Beauty"with 50% less bleakness and 100% more Nicholas Cage. Surprsingly, the boost in Cage content makes for a decent flick.

Take heart, a movie review will not follow. (Yes, there will be spoilers.)

It was my intention to catch the Wallace and Gromit full-length last night but was suitably punished for failing to understand the movie times listing. My "choice B" movie, however, turned out to be pretty entertaining. I didn't feel, even once, like back-handing Nick Cage's saggy old mug (and it was most definitely sagging in this feature); the writing and dialogue was believable and snappy; Michael Caine was on hand to provide his usual Acting; and I was generally never bored or feeling like my life was slipping out from between my fingers.

Watching "The Weather Man"opened my eyes to some interesting facts. I should not have been surprised, but I was still quite amazed to learn the obscene amounts of money a TV weather man can earn. For much of the film, Nicholas Cage's character does the weather for a regional Chicago news program and takes home a paltry annual salary of $240,000. One of key plot developments involves Cage being offered the weather gig for the Good Morning America-ish Hello America, right alongside host, Bryant Gumbel (playing himself). With his compulsory endorsement deals, that job takes Cage's weatherman into a tidy $1.2 million dollars a year. Over a million dollars... reporting on the weather! And most of it's complete random bullshit!

Yes, the plot draws A LOT of mileage out of this discrepancy between the worth of the Weatherman and the worth of the actual man himself, as viewed through the lense of his beleaguered personal life. The director and writer lay on the metaphors and dramatic elements extra thick for this movie, which is why it is so easy to compare to Sam Mendes' "American Beauty". Unlike that movie, however, "The Weather Man" ends on a mixed note, dispensing a warm fuzzy message about acceptance, the American Dream and being thankful for one's talents, however questionable they may be. Yet in this embrace of his "weatherman-ness" the protagonist resigns himself to a job he openly acknowledged as being quite meaningless, but damn, does it ever pay well!

I've always been very mindful of the intrinsic value of any activity to the point where it has probably screwed up my working life, financially. If I don't believe in what I'm doing or derive some kind of satisfaction from doing it, then I shut down or walk away. If I find a task too simple or if I just have a natural proficiency for it, I also will not see the value in pursuing it further. I think that is the Big Choice we all face as we go through school and enter the working world. De we do what we're good at or do we do what we love? Do they have to be mutually exclusive? A recent book by Po Bronson called "What Should I Do With My Life" explores that question, offering real-life accounts of people who fell into the trap of pursuing a career that aligned with their talents, only to realize much later that they loathed their jobs and their lives because of it.

There's an obvious metaphor at work in "The Weather Man" in the way it contrasts Cage's impulsive, self-loathing protagonist with his father, play by Michael Caine. Caine is initially presented as the imposing and brusque father figure who is promptly taken down a few pegs by a surprise diagnosis of lymphoma. The backstory behind Caine's character focuses on his accomplishments as a writer, having been awarded a Pulitzer prize and universally hailed as a "national treasure". Son idolizes father and this is best symbolized by Cage's ham-handed attempts at writing science fiction and his other feeble attempts to please daddy Caine, but to no avail. The father and the son. The Intellectual and the Celebrity. When Caine finally croaks, Cage takes the plum job with Good Morning America and is seen paraded (literally) through Time Square with Bryant Gumbel and waving stiffly to the cheering masses. Gee, the death of substance and the triumph of superficiality. Nay, the triumph of TV over the printed word. Definitely a cogent message in the mid-00s. I only wished it wasn't so blatantly shoved into the movie's thematic structure. Still, it is a Hollywood movie, after all and it's helmed by the talented hack director, Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Carribean, The Ring). I suppose some cutting of slack is appropriate when you consider that another director could easily have made the movie about Nicholas Cage being continuously pelted on the streets with fast food products (read: tasty product placement) and his various hilarious reactions. Oh, right, Verbinski included that stuff too, perhaps to placate the impatient moviegoers who might not have gelled with this ultimately very quirky, sometimes challenging, Hollywood movie.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to brush up on my metereology and green screen techniques.