Knight at the Movies ARCHIVES
It's Raining Middle Aged Men:
The Weather Man and Shopgirl
10-26-05 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times column
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Nicolas Cage is an actor that you can’t count on. His performances are wildly inconsistent – either loaded with his
signature tics (Snake Eyes and Adaptation come to mind), beautifully nuanced (Leaving Las Vegas and It Could
Happen to You), or so out of left field they’re mesmerizing (Moonstruck, When Peggy Sue Got Married, Wild at
Heart, Vampire’s Kiss). The latter category contains his most interesting work. When Cage shoots for the moon
and reaches it his joy is infectious. His derring-do in these roles is the ultimate actor’s feat and it’s in those early
performances that he made his biggest connection with me.
But audiences seem to love Cage best in big budget action flicks or as an Everyman In Crisis and the actor plays
another one in The Weather Man. David Spritz, Cage’s character, is in the midst of a midlife meltdown.
Spritz is a huge success on the outside (he’s a Chicago TV weatherman being eyed for a national slot by the
network) but an emotional flop on the inside (he can’t seem to please his difficult father or connect with his kids or
estranged wife). Like Meryl Streep’s character in Postcards from the Edge, he can’t feel his life anymore.
As we watch the character going through his daily life trying to control everything (his mantra is “I can fix this”)
we recognize that he’s bound to repeat the same mistakes. Many of his attempts to connect with those around him
– trying to interest his pudgy pre-teen daughter in archery or attempting to curry favor with his father with the
news about the potential job, for example – feel exactly right. Credit for that goes first to Steve Conrad’s by the
numbers script (I actually mean that as a compliment) and second to Cage who knows a lot about playing midlife
crisis after many similar film parts.
We know going in – having seen a lot of these movies before (Irwin Kirshner’s 1970 Loving is one of my
favorites) – that Spritz is going to come out okay in the end. Whether he will finally please Michael Caine as his
judgmental father, Hope Davis as his estranged, prickly wife or his kids, let alone himself, is another matter that
these movies exist to address. Caine and Davis spar beautifully with Cage who seems to just take it as his due.
“Easy doesn’t enter into grown up life” Caine as the father tells Cage at one point, also pointing out that control is
an illusion and I wish the movie had left it at that. But like a lot of these life lesson pictures, The Weather Man is so
weighted with metaphor that it seems almost top heavy. We’re shown the symbolism right from the get go – the
film opens with a shot of Lake Michigan iced over and we know that it’s going to be chilly going for these
characters (and for us). The worst example of the metaphor overkill is that often when Spritz is recognized,
people, apparently angry about his lousy forecasting, toss fast food items at him, visually showing us repeatedly
the random chaos and mess of life and his inability to control it.
Even though the metaphor stuff wore me down each new scene of another off beat Chicago location (director Gore
Verbinski’s camera roams all over the city) kept my enthusiasm high and eventually eclipsed my interest in the
plot. In one scene Cage and Caine actually drove past the Loop screening room where I was watching the movie.
I had my own little catharsis at that point but after my mind wandered for a bit I decided I’d better check back in
with the plot to see how it was going. It was right where I thought it would be – the sun was coming out, the ice
was melting and Cage was finding emotional fulfillment – right on schedule.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Steve Martin wants his comedy to be taken seriously and to make sure of that he produced, wrote and stars in
Shopgirl, which is based on his short novel. Shopgirl is about 2,000 miles from The Jerk and the stand up comic
who felt himself possessed by happy feet and had a novelty hit record with “King Tut.” Martin is now the most
erudite of comedians and quite the sophisticate. His comedy of today inspires a polite chuckle rather than
yesteryear’s guffaw but your appreciation of his work will depend on changing rather than lowering expectations.
I don’t think that the Martin of Shopgirl and L.A. Story is any less talented or interesting than the Martin of Pennies
from Heaven and All of Me. But I must confess a predilection for the inspired zany physical comedy of the earlier
work as opposed to the careful, studied word constructed comedy behind the latter. Martin closely mimics Woody
Allen in this regard. Surely there’s nothing more hilarious than parts of Allen’s slapstick Bananas and Sleeper and
yet I can’t resist the comic patter of Bullets Over Broadway and Manhattan Murder Mystery either.
No surprise then that Shopgirl is a story that Allen would love: Mirabelle (Claire Danes), a young sales clerk who
sells fancy schmancy gloves must decide between Jeremy, the young, messy, not so successful but artistic Jew
(Jason Schwartzman) or Ray, the middle-aged, antiseptic WASP with fabulous wealth (Martin). This intermittently
interesting story has good performances by its principals and two strokes of brilliance by Martin the screenwriter –
one is the manner in which his character first asks out Mirabelle and the second is a revelation about her character
that serves to deepen the film and gives it the much needed weight the off putting Philip Glass-like score keeps
telling us it already has. I won’t reveal either as there’s not much else to be savored in this feather light movie
except perhaps the tantalizing idea of re-imagining the whole thing with a shopboy instead of a shopgirl as the
central character (and Danes teenage boy physicality makes that easy going). Have as much fun with that fantasy
as I did.
The Weather Man and Shopgirl
10-26-05 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times column
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Nicolas Cage is an actor that you can’t count on. His performances are wildly inconsistent – either loaded with his
signature tics (Snake Eyes and Adaptation come to mind), beautifully nuanced (Leaving Las Vegas and It Could
Happen to You), or so out of left field they’re mesmerizing (Moonstruck, When Peggy Sue Got Married, Wild at
Heart, Vampire’s Kiss). The latter category contains his most interesting work. When Cage shoots for the moon
and reaches it his joy is infectious. His derring-do in these roles is the ultimate actor’s feat and it’s in those early
performances that he made his biggest connection with me.
But audiences seem to love Cage best in big budget action flicks or as an Everyman In Crisis and the actor plays
another one in The Weather Man. David Spritz, Cage’s character, is in the midst of a midlife meltdown.
Spritz is a huge success on the outside (he’s a Chicago TV weatherman being eyed for a national slot by the
network) but an emotional flop on the inside (he can’t seem to please his difficult father or connect with his kids or
estranged wife). Like Meryl Streep’s character in Postcards from the Edge, he can’t feel his life anymore.
As we watch the character going through his daily life trying to control everything (his mantra is “I can fix this”)
we recognize that he’s bound to repeat the same mistakes. Many of his attempts to connect with those around him
– trying to interest his pudgy pre-teen daughter in archery or attempting to curry favor with his father with the
news about the potential job, for example – feel exactly right. Credit for that goes first to Steve Conrad’s by the
numbers script (I actually mean that as a compliment) and second to Cage who knows a lot about playing midlife
crisis after many similar film parts.
We know going in – having seen a lot of these movies before (Irwin Kirshner’s 1970 Loving is one of my
favorites) – that Spritz is going to come out okay in the end. Whether he will finally please Michael Caine as his
judgmental father, Hope Davis as his estranged, prickly wife or his kids, let alone himself, is another matter that
these movies exist to address. Caine and Davis spar beautifully with Cage who seems to just take it as his due.
“Easy doesn’t enter into grown up life” Caine as the father tells Cage at one point, also pointing out that control is
an illusion and I wish the movie had left it at that. But like a lot of these life lesson pictures, The Weather Man is so
weighted with metaphor that it seems almost top heavy. We’re shown the symbolism right from the get go – the
film opens with a shot of Lake Michigan iced over and we know that it’s going to be chilly going for these
characters (and for us). The worst example of the metaphor overkill is that often when Spritz is recognized,
people, apparently angry about his lousy forecasting, toss fast food items at him, visually showing us repeatedly
the random chaos and mess of life and his inability to control it.
Even though the metaphor stuff wore me down each new scene of another off beat Chicago location (director Gore
Verbinski’s camera roams all over the city) kept my enthusiasm high and eventually eclipsed my interest in the
plot. In one scene Cage and Caine actually drove past the Loop screening room where I was watching the movie.
I had my own little catharsis at that point but after my mind wandered for a bit I decided I’d better check back in
with the plot to see how it was going. It was right where I thought it would be – the sun was coming out, the ice
was melting and Cage was finding emotional fulfillment – right on schedule.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Steve Martin wants his comedy to be taken seriously and to make sure of that he produced, wrote and stars in
Shopgirl, which is based on his short novel. Shopgirl is about 2,000 miles from The Jerk and the stand up comic
who felt himself possessed by happy feet and had a novelty hit record with “King Tut.” Martin is now the most
erudite of comedians and quite the sophisticate. His comedy of today inspires a polite chuckle rather than
yesteryear’s guffaw but your appreciation of his work will depend on changing rather than lowering expectations.
I don’t think that the Martin of Shopgirl and L.A. Story is any less talented or interesting than the Martin of Pennies
from Heaven and All of Me. But I must confess a predilection for the inspired zany physical comedy of the earlier
work as opposed to the careful, studied word constructed comedy behind the latter. Martin closely mimics Woody
Allen in this regard. Surely there’s nothing more hilarious than parts of Allen’s slapstick Bananas and Sleeper and
yet I can’t resist the comic patter of Bullets Over Broadway and Manhattan Murder Mystery either.
No surprise then that Shopgirl is a story that Allen would love: Mirabelle (Claire Danes), a young sales clerk who
sells fancy schmancy gloves must decide between Jeremy, the young, messy, not so successful but artistic Jew
(Jason Schwartzman) or Ray, the middle-aged, antiseptic WASP with fabulous wealth (Martin). This intermittently
interesting story has good performances by its principals and two strokes of brilliance by Martin the screenwriter –
one is the manner in which his character first asks out Mirabelle and the second is a revelation about her character
that serves to deepen the film and gives it the much needed weight the off putting Philip Glass-like score keeps
telling us it already has. I won’t reveal either as there’s not much else to be savored in this feather light movie
except perhaps the tantalizing idea of re-imagining the whole thing with a shopboy instead of a shopgirl as the
central character (and Danes teenage boy physicality makes that easy going). Have as much fun with that fantasy
as I did.
Nicolas Cage and Steve Martin in two films that are par for their courses
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