El sol de cada mañana

In Chicago, Dave Spritz (Nicolas Cage) is the weatherman of the local TV news loved and loathed by the audiences. He is successful in his career making US$ 240,000.00 per year in spite of not having degree in meteorology. However, his personal life is a complete mess: he is a frustrated writer divorced from his wife Noreen (Hope Davis) but he still likes her and wishes to have her back and their marriage work; his sixteen year-old son Mike (Nicholas Hoult) is in rehabilitation for using pot; his clumsy and fat daughter Shelly (Gemmenne de la Peña) is constantly humiliated at school by her mates and pejoratively called "camel-toe"; his father Robert Spritzel (Michael Caine) is a distant perfectionist writer and Dave tries to prove his own value to him. When Dave is invited for a test in a national network in New York, his father informs that he has cancer. While trying to resolve his problems and frustrations, Dave grows-up and reaches the necessary maturity to manage the complexities of life.

"The Weather Man" is a weird and pessimist view of the contemporary American Way of Life. The complex and contradictory lead character is capable of making lots of money just because he can perfectly sell his image to the public without having knowledge about what he is talking; inclusive he is frustrated, feels shallow and compares himself to a fast-food. But he is unsuccessful to have the right attitudes with his family in spite of his best efforts and needy to prove his father his own merits. However, the story is pointless and boring in some moments and in the end I found this movie only reasonable, but with a great potential not well explored by the director. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Sol de Cada Manhã" ("The Sun of Each Morning")

The cusp of the dreaded mid-life crisis. The realization that life sucks either because you've removed the rose colored glasses or because you've been hit by one of life's ice balls. While at the point where you still believe in happy endings and hold on to the possibility that if one good thing happens everything else will fall into place.

So the story begins...Dave Spritz is a Chicago weatherman. As the events of his life get worse he begins to put all his faith in a dream job in New York as a national weatherman. He believes this job will magically restore his failing marriage, his relationship with this kids and garner him the respect from his father (Michael Caine)he so desires.

The ability to find humor in life's tragedies is an accomplishment that director, writer and cast can all be proud of. The comedy in this movie came just often enough to hold back the tears. It was a real life character study and of course Nicholas Cage and Michael Caine were absolutely superb.

What makes the movie so wonderful is that it is based on premises we all know but often forget. 1)Money doesn't buy happiness. 2)The little things mean a lot. 3)To quote the film, "The hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing."

This movie was a great piece of social commentary on the emptiness of our current American culture. Being the weatherman appears to be a great job. It pays almost $300 Grand a year, and you can afford a nice apartment and a mansion for your beautiful blonde ex-wife and your two estranged children.

A job as a weatherman, without a meteorological degree entails absolutely no challenges. You become lazy and bored, because you think you have everything. After all, isn't the entire purpose of life to make money, drive nice cars, and wear nice clothes, and eat out every night of the week? You are able to spoil your children, hence never teaching them the value of challenging themselves and depriving them of ever working toward a goal and feeling satisfied.

This is what we think living is today in this country! We have no depth! We have toxic vocabulary, eat useless toxic food, we watch useless toxic entertainment, and we have completely useless jobs that create nothing. We wonder why our children have no idea what to do with themselves? Wealthy Americans, which most of us are by the standards of the world, have no skills, no integrity, and no character. The only things our children grow up knowing for sure, are what a Frosty is, and a Big Gulp. The gap between this generation and their grandparents is vast. Our elders worked hard at jobs which created the foundation of wealth and substance that we erode every day with our irresponsible selfish consumerist conduct. Mr. Spritz has no idea what a Big Gulp is, but he's dying of the cancer that eats this country.

The Weatherman (Nicholas Cage) has a better time with himself, and everyone else as soon as he figures this out. Hilariously, he had to actually get hit in the head with a Big Gulp. We need to focus on the things that matter, take responsibility for our children, and ourselves. The one thing that I think was off in the movie was the line about how being an adult does not include the word easy. The big secret to life, is that when we do things the correct way, often the hard way, life actually gets easier, for everyone.

I went to the theater expecting the usual vacuous Hollywood bomb. I was blown away with the power of this movie. On the way out, we asked a young man that was working the theater what he thought. He said that he thought The Weatherman was incredibly dark and very far fetched. I agree, our culture is dark and far fetched. The movie, however, was dead on. Our current life is a bubble about to burst. This movie offered a solution - find some meaning in your life and get after it. Pretending this vacuum doesn't exist, and that Jessica and Ashley Simpson are talented individuals worth our time and interest, is incredibly bleak to me. On the other hand, I was pretty sure this young man had no idea the scale of these problems. How could he, when he has never experienced anything else.

When I first saw the advertisements for "The Weather Man", it seemed like the movie was going to be another formulaic, feel good Hollywood redemption tale. In reality, it is a dark, scathing satire of American values. The marketing likely scared away a lot of people who would enjoy the film, while attracting an audience who was presented with something unexpected and perhaps uncomfortable. The comedy is quite raunchy, the tone is bleak, and the story is anything but formulaic, throwing industry conventions right out the window, which leads to a film that's more believable than most.

David Spritz is a man whose life has become the ultimate exercise in futility. Each day, he wakes up and goes to a job that, despite paying a handsome salary, is entirely unfulfilling. His relationship with his ex-wife is strained, his relationship with his children distant. To make things worse, his Pulitzer Prize winning father seems to be disappointed in what David has done with his life.

In real life, progress in one's personal life is generally made in baby steps. Usually, people don't undergo a drastic transformation over the course of several months. David attempts to improve his standing in life, at times failing entirely, at times succeeding in small doses. The results of these attempts range from very funny to downright saddening, and this helps lend the film an air of realism. This is a complicated character study about a man coming to grips with the fact that he's failed to meet any of the goals he set for himself in life, despite attaining a social standing that many people are envious of. There aren't any easy answers or life altering epiphanies; self-improvement is a long, gradual task that will probably never be completely fulfilled, and "The Weather Man" reflects this reality. While not for all tastes, this movie deserves credit for tackling a relatively conventional subject in a very unconventional, at least for a mainstream Hollywood movie, manner. I imagine that this film will be a bigger success overseas and on DVD than it will be in its US theatrical run.

I saw a screening of this tonight, and I was very impressed. I expected a rather shallow comedy, but instead, received a well-thought out and delivered work which was insightful, quirky, funny and touching film which was far above my expectations. Cage delivers a great performance as usual, and the father-son relationship between Cage and Caine was authentic and balanced. This is not just a comedy, but is a study of the importance of family, and an overlying existential questioning of what our lives are all about. I highly recommend it for men and women alike. On a side note... Verbinski's works are diverse, fun, and interesting, and this is no exception.