The Weather Man

I wish there were more smart movies like this being produced.

While I watched The Weather Man, I was wondering how the fuck it ever got green-lighted? I mean, did ANYONE actually think it would be a blockbuster? Not that it's a bad film; far from it. But downer movies like this rarely wow the stinking masses. Maybe they thought it would be some sort of fluke success like American Beauty.

I used to like Nicolas Cage. Really! I thought he was wonderful in Valley Girl, Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Birdy...

But then he started making dreadful comedies. Lame action pictures. Just plain shitty movies. I stopped liking him, but still, in the back of my mind, I had faith in the man. That faith was fulfilled in The Weather Man.

Now, I'm not claiming that it's a masterpiece on the order of The Accidental Tourist or anything, but The Weather Man is a damned good movie. It deals with the human condition with wit, heart, horror and ultimately warmth. But it's a hard, cold and wet road that this weather man takes.

Cage plays a successful weatherman on a local city TV show. The pay is good and he does very little to earn it. But his skill of tuning out everything to put a false face out to the world has cost him his family and his own self-respect. His wife left him. His son and daughter are heading down some decidedly wrong paths. People either love or hate him and it is not uncommon for him to be pelted with food from cars as he walks down the street. His father, an award-winning writer, appears to think he is ridiculous. And he is at a crossroads.

Just as The Weather Man is working on an opportunity to take his shtick to a national level and a considerable raise in his scale of living, he finds that he can no longer ignore the things in his familial orbit. His father has a terminal illness. His children desperately need him. His wife is on the verge of marrying a douchebag. Can this weatherman alter the course of his own stormy life and still continue his rise to the big leagues of national television?

There are a lot of surprises in the film, and some genuine laughs. But I wouldn't really call it a comedy. It's serious as a heart attack, but it's also damned funny. The Weather Man doesn't fall very comfortably into any genre or category and that tends to turn off Joe Public, who like their entertainment to be built around safe, sturdy walls. I'm grateful that films like this slip through the cracks from time to time.