Teh Spritz Nipper

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.