Review of The Weather Man (2005) by Mark W — 08 Aug 2008

WITH Nicolas Cage in the lead and the man who made Pirates Of The Caribbean and The Ring behind the camera, you'd couldn't be blamed for expecting The Weather Man to be a middle-of-the-road pop at multiplex millions.

But you'd be wrong. It's a lot more interesting than that.

Cage is Chicago weather man David Spritz, a man heading for the big time thanks to an audition for national breakfast show Hello America. But behind his bland smile his life is falling apart. His marriage is in ruins, his relationships with his two children are shambolic and his Pulitzer Prize-winning dad is seriously ill.

From the start, The Weather Man plays more like the work of an American novelist - mid-period John Updike or a lighter Philip Roth come to mind - than a project by Hollywood film-makers set to produce another blockbuster to knock 'em dead in Iowa.

Cage is not too proud to play Spritz as an unsympathetic, middle-aged twerp - an under-acheiving son of a spectacularly over-acheiving father - who is the main author of his own misfortunes. He's aided by an intelligent, bemused performance from Michael Caine as his dad and an equally thoughtful turn from Hope Davis, here given far more rewarding material than in The Matador as his estranged wife.

There are moments of effective (though sometimes tasteless) comedy - Spritz seems to be a supremely unpopular local celebrity, with people almost queuing up to throw their lunch at him in the street - but Steven Conrad's screenplay is essentially melancholic.

On the surface, David has everything but, as befits a weather man who knows nothing about meteorology, his own inadequacy eats him up inside ("I receive a large reward for zero effort and contribution," admits Cage's droll voiceover). Cage's character is constantly shot sitting gloomily in waiting rooms, seemingly unaware that his life has actually started and unsure what he's going to do with it.

He's an embarrassment, but over the course of 101 minutes we gradually start rooting for him as he tries to piece his life back together.

With great work from Cage, Caine and Davis, the film also features strong performances from Gemmenne de la Pane and Brit actor Nicolas Hoult (the boy in About A Boy) as Spritz's kids and is tightly and imaginatively handed by director Gore Verbinski. An unexpected delight.