Review of The Weather Man (2005) by Mytwocents — 30 Jan 2012

Recently noticed that this was one of the top streaming selections on Netflix -- seven years after it came out. So I think my sense that this would be a sleeper has been vindicated. After four viewings it is still laugh out loud funny, largely because of the usual passion Cage brings to the part. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the movie is that Spritz, bedeviled by his sense of mediocrity, is actually the least complacent character in a sea of dreary mediocrities. (Pulitzer Prize? Please. Does his estranged wife with the big sad house write sci-fi novels? What about her new blob of a suitor?) I think Ebert had it right -- this is a film about a person who thinks that the standard American measures of success are bunk. But he can't escape from the shadow of his menacing father, who, to his credit, admits in the final scenes that his "like a rock" life hasn't been worth as much as his son thinks it might have.

The film has its false notes -- the creepy counselor scenes and the whole "camel toe" excursion -- but on the whole there's something transcendent about it.