In 2022, Nicolas Cage played Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Enormous Talent a delightful comedy that pitted the veteran star against what /Filmmaker's Jacob Hall described as "often nuanced, generally restrained and painfully, uncomfortably human." That's quite an achievement for Cage, who has been known for anything but his reticence over the past few decades. Even when he acted in the scariest horror movie of 2024, Longlegs he played the mysterious and creepy serial killer with excessive relish. I went into that theater wondering if we were going to see any uncharacteristic restraint on behalf of Cage, but after he started screaming five minutes into the movie I thought, “No!” Not to say his performance was bad, but if you saw it in David's effort Gordon Green from 2013's "Joe," you might be hoping for more of the quietly brooding older Nic Cage and less of the gonzo performances he's become known for.

"The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" certainly gives Cage room to go off the rails in an attempt to reclaim some ownership of his constant facial expressions and line deliveries. But his performance in the film clearly had enough nuance to make the film more than additional off-the-wall Cage nonsense.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent sees Cage play a fictional version of himself whose acting career is on the rocks. Divorced actor reluctantly accepts a $1 million offer to appear at superfan Javi Gutierrez's (Pedro Pascal) birthday party, only to end up on an odyssey working for the CIA to try to uncover the truth about Gutierrez and his supposed arms trade/kidnapping a politician's daughter. Cage embraces his personas in his film roles to get the job done, making a complete meta-commentary on the actor's own life and career that's also one of the best comedies of the last few years. Now, the film has hit Netflix and viewers have seemingly bought into its meta stylings, sending the film soaring the charts just a day after its debut.

By the end of its theatrical run, "The Unbearable Weight of Enormous Talent" managed to attract 29 million dollars worldwide with a budget of $30 million. Not exactly a big financial success then, but the critics were at least satisfied. The film currently enjoys an 87% rating from critics Rotten tomatoesbased on 318 reviews. That makes it one of the highest-rated Nic Cage films of the last five years (and as you might expect, he's been in a lot of them in that time). Even Longlegs isn't as highly rated as Tom Gormican's action comedy.

As such, it's nice to see a critical success doing well on the Netflix charts, which are so often filled with some of the worst streaming trash in the entire streaming sphere. (Kevin Hart's "Elevator" was number one on Netflix this time last year...)

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent arrived on Netflix on January 16, 2025 and proved to be an instant hit. At the time of writing, the film is in fourth place on the US charts for the most watched films. According to FlixPatrolsite that aggregates viewing data from all major streaming platforms, the film debuted in fourth place on January 17, just one day after it appeared on the service. It bodes well for the Nic Cage comedy to reach the top of the charts, perhaps before the week is out.

At the time of writing, French action thriller is number one on Netflix. Ad Vitam, directed by Rodolphe Lauga, is essentially a French version of Taken, which, given the fact that Liam Neeson has been doing his own Taken rip-offs since he starred in the original, seems like fair play to me. . Unfortunately for Nic Cage and his action comedy, Ad Vitam is number one in the US for six days. Not only that, but viewers around the world have sent him to the top of the charts in various other countries, making this a tough challenge for "The Unbearable Weight of Huge Talent" to overcome.

But considering the film debuted at number four just a day after it hit the service, perhaps that will be what finally topples Lauga's stake. To achieve such a feat, however, Cage and co. he will also have to overcome a possibly even more powerful enemy in the form of Minions. "Despicable Me" and "Despicable Me 2" currently occupy the second and third spots on Netflix's US charts, respectively, and they've been there for some time. If The Unbearable Weight of Enormous Talent can leapfrog these two juggernauts, then it will be another win for one of Cage's best modern efforts. What's more, it'll be a nice little reminder that Netflix can serve up more than formulaic blockbusters and movies that would otherwise be forgotten straight-to-DVD souls — just like when Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Interstellar has climbed the Netflix charts to start the new year.