What’s this all about?
What would happen if a divorced Chicago television weather man’s dad got cancer, and the weather man’s kids had kind of bad judgement? Mostly nothing.
Your English teacher probably told you that there were three types of conflict in fiction; man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself. You probably wondered what that third one was.
It’s this. Nick Cage spends 102 minutes thinking about stuff, and going to work. We get to watch.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “David Spritz,” a local weather man at a Chicago TV station. He’s divorced, but wants to get back together with his wife. His son is in “rehab” for pot. His daughter is lumpy and dull. His Pulitzer-prize winning father isn’t proud of him. These things all trouble Nick.
I’m probably going to crap all over this movie in this review, but it should be noted that the acting, across the board, including Nick was very good. I believed all of these boring-ass people.
Who else is in this one?
Hope Davis plays “Noreen,” Nick’s ex-wife. She seems very familiar to me, but I honestly can’t find a single credit that I recognize. Her acting is very good, and she’s the same age as Nick, which makes for a nice change.
Nicholas Hoult (“Renfield” from Renfield) plays “Mike,” Nicks teenage son who gets into some typical teenage trouble. He’s very believable.
Michael Caine (“Hoagie” from Jaws: The Revenge) plays Nick’s Dad, a Pulitzer-prize winning novelist. He’s Michael Cain. You know what you’re getting.
Did you see that?
Throughout the film, people driving by in cars throw fast food items at Nick. They do this, not because they’re jealous of his success as his character believes, but because he’s an asshole to everyone.
Anyway, Nick is very detailed in describing the food items. He doesn’t get hit with a soda, he gets hit with a “Big Gulp.” He doesn’t get hit with a milk shake, he gets hit by a “Frosty.” At one point, he’s rolling out the litany of things that have been thrown at him, and one item stood out to me.
He gets hit with a chicken breast “from Kenny Rogers.”
Kenny Rogers’ Roaster was a chain of chicken restaurants founded in 1991, and operating in the US until 2011. It was founded, as you might imagine, by country music star Kenny Rogers. The fast food restaurant featured rotisserie chickens cooked in wood-fired ovens. This was long before you could get a rotisserie chicken at any American grocery store.
I lived just a stone’s throw from Chicagoland in the late 90’s, and this scene made me remember my many trips to Rockford, when I needed to go to a store bigger or more specialized than the Wal-Mart or the Cub Foods in the town where I lived. I always tried to plan my trips for the afternoon or early evening so that on my way home I could drive through Kenny Rogers’ Roasters and get a chicken. I can still remember the smell filling my truck cab for the long ride home.
It was excellent chicken, and Kenny Rogers was an excellent singer. -Michael
Nick had a mother in this movie and she was married to his father. She was in a couple of scenes, but only a couple. It was a bit role. I don’t understand why though. She wasn’t in any of the important scenes that a wife/mother would be in. For example, why wasn’t she at any of the doctor visits that Nick had to drive his father to? Why didn’t she go on the New York trip to see a specialist and to get a second opinion? Why not have the mother be dead or just not there at all? I don’t understand. – Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts? (Michael/Sarah)
For the best and worst scenes, I’m going to contrast two very similar scenes involving Nick having a conflict with Russ, his ex-wife’s boyfriend.
In the first scene, early in the film, Nick arrives at his former family home and almost immediately gets into an argument with his ex-wife, Noreen, on the sidewalk in front of the house. Russ comes out of the house and insists that Nick “take a step back.”
In my view, the argument between Nick and Noreen was not to the level of something that needed to be “broken up” by a third party. They were mad, and arguing loudly, but no one was getting aggressive.
This made Russ’ intervention feel like a needless demonstration of power.
In response, Nick curses Russ out. What made the scene great was that Nick delivered his stream of profanity like somebody who is genuinely bad at, and uncomfortable with swearing.
It was a clumsy, stuttering, nonsensical stream of badly paired vulgar insults, just like a real middle-aged man from a wealthy Chicago suburb might deliver.
It was perfect. Nick really gave the impression that he was not the sort of man to routinely hurl slurs, but that this idiot had driven him to it. -Michael
Nick did a great job playing a awkward, slightly nerdy loser type. A complete fuck up. He did a lot of great voice over bits where he just had to sit and look like he was thinking everything the voice over was ranting about. He did a great job. At this. The best was the bit when he was contemplating why people throw food at him. – Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
Nick’s second encounter with Russ came after Nick’s son, Mike had been arrested for smashing the window of a car belonging to a rehab counsellor who had tried to molest him.
In this scene, family tensions are similarly high. This time, however, Russ behaves in a more reasonable manner, telling Nick, when he arrives, that his son is upstairs in his room. Nick responds to this by slapping Russ and screaming incoherently at him.
I know that we’re supposed to think Nick is already on his last nerve when the scene begins, but his reaction was way over the top, and didn’t fit the character. The nuance and depth from the previous scene was completely absent.
I feel like Nick’s intensity had been successfully reigned in throughout the rest of what was, honestly, a pretty dull movie, and in this scene the director just let Nick go nuts, and so he screamed and yelled and waved his arms around. You know. “Acting.” -Michael
When Nick took his daughter shopping in New York City. Previously, Nick’s father had told him that the kids were teasing his daughter calling her “camel toe.” When the daughter came out of the dressing room and Nick saw her camel toe, he over acted out his shock. He practically fell out of his chair. I know it was for a humorous moment, but it was too over the top and just unbelievable. – Sarah
How was the movie?
As previously mentioned, this film is a textbook example of the “slice of life where nothing happens” genre that I hate so much. These are films in which we see a zoomed-in view of the daily life of more-or-less average people, and they struggle with more-or-less normal problems by thinking about them. Then, maybe they learn a lesson, but usually they don’t, and the movie ends. We all muse about how “authentic” and “relatable” the film was, but when asked to summarize the film in a single sentence, we can’t. Or, if we can, it’s not a very interesting sentence.
Perhaps such a summary for The Weather Man would read, “A clueless asshole weather man wishes things were different, but does nothing to change anything.” More charitably, you could go with, “A weather man struggles with self-doubt, family strife, and workplace issues while trying to come to terms with his father’s impending death.”
Compare that to a similar summary of the objectively awful martial arts film, The Miami Connection, in which “A group of college friends forms a rock band and battles a gang of drug-dealing ninjas, while learning the real meaning of ‘family’.”
If I had to pick a movie to watch on Saturday night based on those summaries, I know that I’d be watching The Miami Connection again.
Perhaps it makes me shallow, but I feel like the medium for introspection and navel-gazing, and lengthy worries about how to have a difficult conversation with your pre-teen daughter is the novel. Films are just too short, and too visual for stories in which the majority of the conflict takes place silently, inside a character’s head.
I also feel like there’s typically very little character growth in this type of move. Usually the “message” is “just learn to accept the shit that’s been handed to you.” That’s certainly the case with The Weather Man. In the end, Nick finds happiness by just accepting the fact that he’ll never get his family back, and just doing the vapid, money-making work that he doesn’t seem to care about. -Michael
I can and do enjoy a good introspective movie. That being said, this one could be a little slow moving at times. It wasn’t the best of it’s genre. – Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
The Weather Man wasn’t torture. The bit about his daughter being called “camel toe” was amusing. Cage’s (and everyone else’s) acting was good. There’s no way I would ever recommend that anyone watch this, though. -Michael
It was pretty okay. In fact it came close to being good, but it’s not very memorable. – Sarah
Where can I watch it?
You can rent it on Amazon Prime. The Miami Connection is free on Tubi, though. I’m just putting that out there.
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