My Blind Spot

Unlike many people I have no real opinion on Nicolas Cage. Sure he’s a bit funny looking. In fact he looks like his head has been carved out of a misshapen parsnip. But he’s innocuous enough. He’s like Kevin Cosner and Tom Hanks, too bland for me to work up any opinions on one way or another.

So this topic is quite a difficult one for me, and to be honest I’m not convinced I’m going to be able to tackle it properly.

Oh sure there are plenty of movies that Cage has been in that I like: The Rock, Face Off, and Gone in 60 Seconds to name just three. But Cage’s presence in those movies is neither here nor there. He’s adequate enough, he doesn’t do anything particularly wrong, but if he was replaced by another actor I wouldn’t really care all that much.

Don’t get me wrong though, he’s definitely been in some stinkers. Ghost Rider is possibly the worst movie known to man. Certainly it’s the worst I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure I felt blood trickling out my ears after around ten minutes of being exposed to it. The fact that they are talking about making a sequel is simply incomprehensible to me and is concrete evidence that Hollywood has been taken over by the bodysnatchers.

But again, the awfulness of Ghost Rider wasn’t due to Mr Cage in particular. He just happened to be in the movie, that’s all.

Basically Nicolas Cage is like an inert gas. He is the anti-catalyst. He has no power to make a good film bad or a bad film good. He just exists in whichever state he is placed without exerting any effect on his surroundings. I don’t know if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. It’s just “a thing” – which is rather apt really all things considered.

So then; which Nic Cage film do I feel like leaping to the defense of?

Well I’m not sure really. Originally I was going to come down on the side of Con Air, but for me that’s Malkovitch and Cusack’s film really (although, despite Jeff’s naysaying over on the Coalition’s Google Wave conversations I still maintain that it’s a crackingly good movie). A controversial view of Con Air perhaps but as I say, Cage is almost invisible to me in most of his films.

So I’m opting for the most recent film I saw him in – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The movie got pretty widely panned by the critics and was a box office bomb, but I think that’s a little unfair. Yes, sure, it was a paint by the numbers plot put together by the marketing department of Disney rather than any creative process. But it was also in one of my favorite genre’s (urban fantasy), had some very imaginative and impressive special effects, and had rather decent performances by both Jay Baruchel and Teresa Palmer (although I still maintain Baruchet’s part should have been played by Zac Levi).

It also made me chuckle a fair bit, and I can forgive a movie many things if it manages to make me laugh.

The movie also probably benefited from me going in with very low expectations. I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that I get a lot more out of my cinematic experiences if I go in expecting the worst. Perhaps this is a phenomenon that the movie studios should take advantage of – make deliberately cacky looking trailers in order that the audience are pleasantly surprised when they get in. Maybe they have even thought of this already – it could be that that’s what’s going on with the trailers for Grown Ups. Who knows.

So yes, Sorcerer’s Apprentice is my choice for Nic Cage movie that I’m going to defend. But what’s Nic Cage’s performance in it like?

Well, it’s alright I suppose. I dunno, I didn’t really notice him much.