O Sol de Cada Manhã

Greetings again from the darkness. So Close. This is painfully close to being a great film. Although still very good at presenting issues normally not seen on film, director Gore Verbinski ("Pirates of the Caribbean" "The Ring") falls just short of making a very powerful statement.

Please do not let the trailer fool you. This is not slapstick comedy like "Anchorman". This is deep, often dark subject matter addressing the emotional struggles men face when dealing with a bad divorce, trying to maintain a relationship with kids, and the pressures of trying to make one's own dad proud (or at least gain acceptance). So often Hollywood deals with the plight of the woman and her emotional turmoil. Instead we are "treated" with watching a man's attempt to live up to (what he thinks are) expectations of others and how somehow the right job will make everything OK ... his life will be whole.

Nicolas Cage gives another outstanding performance as "The Weather Man" on a Chicago TV station. To add to the complexity, he is not a meteorologist and he is being courted by a national morning talk show featuring Bryant Gumbel. Two areas with this character are poorly written in my opinion. First, Cage's hair weave is bloody awful. At least in Dallas, weather men all look like Televangelists with perfect hair. His is always askew ... don't they have hair/make-up staff in Chicago? Second, the character is written as too much of a loser in all aspects. He is not just struggling, he is not someone any guy or girl would want to hang with. The film tries, but fails, to show the "switch" come on when Cage steps in front of the camera. They tell us this happens, but it needed to be presented much clearer.

Playing Cage's father, Michael Caine is a pretty intimidating figure as he is confused about his son's direction in life while at the same time facing a very dark future of his own. Caine is wonderful in the role and when he tells his son "Sometimes in life, you just have to chuck it", we really get it and hope that Cage does as well.

On the other hand, Hope Davis is cast as yet another frigid "B" yuppie whom I don't understand how any man could be attracted to. Yet somehow this is the woman Cage wants back. Time to stretch your talent a bit Hope. You showed plenty of promise in "About Schmidt" and have been working steadily since. But to take the next step as an actress, you need to try a new character. Gil Bellows ("Aly McBeal") has a creepy role as Cage's teenage son's counselor. He is responsible for some of the most uncomfortable moments as well as a way for Cage to finally cut loose.

As I said, this is a very good movie that falls just short of greatness. While providing insight into the male psyche, it fails to deliver the message or solution it seemed to be leading up to. However, it is nice to see a man portrayed as something other than a superhero, adulterer, international spy or Olympic caliber lover.

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.

At first, it would seem that The Weather Man doesn't have a point to make. We follow David Spritz as his life falls apart around him, and it would seem like that's all the film is. By the ending; we do get a defining point, and while Gore Verbinski hammers it home a little too hard for it to be as effective as it could have been; it's a good point and gives credence to a thoroughly enjoyable little film. This is a pretty big change of pace from the big budgeted kids' films that Verbinski has been making recently, and his approach to this far more low key film is sombre and relaxed, and The Weather Man benefits from that. The plot focuses on the difference between one man's personal and working life. At work, he is a successful weather man, who's been headhunted by a bigger network. But in his private life, he's estranged from his wife; his kids aren't exactly top of the class and just to top it all off, every time he steps onto the street, fast food gets thrown at him! Spiralling downwards, his life is approaching collapse; and he must choose between his family and a big salary in New York.

Nicolas Cage takes the lead role, and while he's never really stretched; he manages to give a fine performance throughout the film. In support, we've got the likes of Michael Caine and Hope Davis, as well as talented youngster Gemmenne de la Peña, who all round the acting off nicely. The film manages to pull together two very different tones and make it work. There's some rather funny humour on display, and this is mixed with an overall pessimistic mindset. This gives The Weather Man something of an original standpoint, and although it has to be said that the plot itself is never overly interesting, the tone of the movie is good enough to see it through. From mainstream cinema; especially American mainstream cinema, you don't expect to see films with such a depressing viewpoint on life - but it really doesn't get much more depressing than the one professed here. Verbinski's film states that, like the weather, life cannot be predicted - and no matter what hopes and dreams you have, they're likely to be smashed by the time it comes to realising them. Ouch.

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.

Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean X3, The Ring, The Mexican) has an uncanny way of moving strange characters through bizarre plots while maintaining our interest and our empathy. THE WEATHER MAN was so poorly promoted when it hit the theaters that it seemed like it was going to be one of those asinine food throwing slapstick comedies instead of the very serious examination of contemporary life in the big cities, or even more about the struggle of a disillusioned man who cannot find a balance between business success and family/marital failure, it is. This viewer almost ignored it completely - until the DVD.

David Spritz (Nicholas Cage) is a TV pawn the station uses as a weatherman: he is untrained as a meteorologist, skilled only be his TV persona success dependent on a created gag/tag line - the Nipper (the peak worst day in the forecast). His personal life is a mess, separated from a disconsolate wife Noreen (Hope Davis), distanced from his successful writer father Robert (Michael Caine) and on shaky territory with his two children - fat and sad Sully (Gemmenne de la Peña) and sweet but troubled pothead Mike (Nicholas Hoult). To make life worse his TV persona follows him into the streets of blustery Chicago where his viewers either seek autographs invading his privacy or throw food at him as the progenitor of the lousy cold weather. This polarized existence is invaded by an offer to become weatherman on Bryan Gumbel's Hello America show in New York (a career jump for which he longs for many reasons), serial confrontations with his father whom he emulates but always feels a failure, the finding that his father has lymphoma, the ridicule of fat Shelly at school, Mike's edgy involvement with his drug counselor Don (Gil Bellows), and Noreen's new live-in Russ (Michael Rispoli). How David meanders through this quagmire of dilemmas is the story and while it is not pretty, it is pungent.

Cage inhabits the strange role of David finding a way to make this loser with a short temper someone about whom we care. It is a tough assignment but Cage meets it on every level. Michael Caine provides some of the more eloquent moments in the film: his words of wisdom and view of life are the only grounded elements of the story. Likewise Hope Davis is fine as are the cameo roles of the children as sensitively played by de la Peña and Hoult. The subject of the film is tough and the excessive use of potty mouth language is overbearing and at times one wishes Verbinski would have edited some of the gross food slinging scenes.

But as an overall message movie there is much here to admire. It simply is not the mindless slapstick the posters and trailers would indicate. The PR folks on this one blew it. Worth your time and attention. Grady Harp