The Weather Man came out in 2005, making it an extremely awkward movie to review given that it isn't old enough to be something nostalgic but is still completely irrelevant in the scheme of things. But, fuck it, I just watched it, so here is my review below:
What
makes Gore Verbinski’s The Weather Man
a gem is the fact that it puts forth almost no effort whatsoever to glamorize
the true shit of American life – a ballsy move for a Hollywood movie in a world
where mainstream audiences have formed a dependency to some kind of dressing in
order to be able to maintain an intrigue into what’s happening onscreen.
Cinema
is a powerful tool in that, when used correctly, it allows for people to
immerse themselves into different worlds that they aren’t familiar with. Denying
this would be to deny the very reason people went to the movies in the first
place. But too many filmmakers and audiences feel that this means an
appreciation for the life that we’re all familiar with just isn’t going to cut
it. This is probably the reason why The
Weather Man received such mixed reception – it was literally just a movie
about life.
The film
takes us through Nicolas Cage’s mid-life crisis as a Chicago weatherman named
Dave Spritz, struggling to pull his family together just as he receives a job
offer for the esteemed “Hello America” morning show in New York. The bulk of
the film is subjective to Spritz, voiceover by Nicolas Cage often being used to
pull us through the narrative.
The
whole film itself is admittedly risky. The entire narrative is done in such a
way that it would be extraordinarily easy to fail at connecting with and
investing anything in the main character and then spending the rest of the film
detached and uninterested, but there is enough of a combined investment in the
character by Nic Cage and Gore Verbinski that it can’t help but be contagious.
The
brand of humor is equally as risky, emerging throughout the film as some
strange synthesis of dry subtly and blunt crassness. The funny moments don’t so
much offer to distract or relieve as much as induce dark chuckles within the
bleakness. This couples well with overall quirkiness of the filmmaking,
allowing neither the comedy nor the drama to seem unnatural or poorly-blended.
The performances
aren’t bad, though nothing particularly notable is accomplished by anyone
besides Cage and Michael Caine (his American accent might need a bit of work,
though). The score by Hans Zimmer is equally as quirky as the filmmaking, showing
a particularly interesting sense of innovation that would make it difficult to
recognize him as the man behind it if you didn’t already know. The editing is
excellent and works well with the cinematography, both of which core elements
in the resulting tone of the film.
Cage
manages to sum up the entire film in his very first scene: “refreshing.” It’s
refreshing to see a film out of Hollywood with balls of something indie and an
undeniable synthesis between technical and narrative elements that just make
the entire thing work. It’s quirky, it’s bleak, and there’s no glamorization
about it, but all of the elements involved manage to pull the film together and
keep it comfortably strung in a way that Dave Spritz unfortunately cannot seem
to do with his own shit life.
