Producers: Nicolas Cage, Mike Nilon, Kristin Burr and Kevin Turen   Director: Tom Gormican   Screenplay:  Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten   Cast: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Ike Barinholtz, Paco León, Alessandra Mastronardi, Jacob Scipio, Lily Sheen, Neil Patrick Harris and Tiffany Haddish   Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade:  C+

Tom Gormican flopped with his first foray into feature writing-directing, “That Awkward Moment,” in 2014, which helps explain why it’s taken nearly a decade for him to be given a second chance.  “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” a title obviously meant as a curious nod to Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel and Philip Kaufman’s 1988 film based on it, is much cleverer, in today’s trendy meta fashion, than that debut movie; in the end, though, it lacks the satirical sharpness and technical panache necessary to pull the central joke off.

Nicolas Cage stars as a fictionalized version of himself undergoing a personal and professional crisis.  His career is cratering—he’s deeply in debt and about to be thrown out of his apartment, has just lost a role he thought might be a comeback chance, he’s divorced, and his teen daughter Addy (Lily Sheen) is angry and embarrassed by him.  The only offer his agent Richard Fink (Neil Patrick Harris) can scrape up is an invitation to attend a birthday bash for a rabid fan named Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal).  And he’s being badgered by his wacky younger self, a constantly combustible hallucination who insists he has to be a movie star.

So Cage decides to quit acting.  But he will take Gutierrez’s million dollar offer, and winds up at the billionaire’s seaside estate on the Spanish island of Mallorca.  The two men hit it off, with Gutierrez’s idolization of Cage a welcome change for the dissolute actor and Cage’s willingness to read a script Javi has written for him the ultimate case of wish-fulfillment.

But the idyllic sojourn is interrupted when two CIA agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz) tell Cage that Javi is the head of an international arms cartel who has kidnapped the daughter of the president of Catalonia to sabotage an election.  They draft him to help in her rescue.

From this point the movie turns into a rather low-rent copy of the old big-budget action movies that Cage once starred in—allusions to many of which are scattered throughout, especially in a sequence in which Javi introduces his guest to his collection of memorabilia.  In one instance Cage has to climb along a ledge of Javi’s mansion while drugged with poison, in another he disguises himself as an arms-dealing elder to meet with the Gutierrez crime family.  It all culminates in a car chase through the picturesque city streets in which the cast of characters is expanded to include not just the kidnapped girl but also Addy and her mom Olivia (Sharon Horgan), whom Javi has brought to Mallorca as a courteous gesture.

That points to a second major thread in the picture—also reminiscent of old Cage blockbusters—the bromance that develops between Cage and Javi, who of course turns out to be far more fan and screenwriter than criminal.  Cage plays on his screen persona in this section of the movie too, and his broad, self-ribbing performance on both scores will delight his devotees; and even those who don’t count themselves as fans will have to admire him for being willing to poke fun at himself (even as the movie celebrates him as a screen icon). 

But Cage’s audacity in aiming for the bleaches, for good or ill, is legendary.  The real surprise is Pascal, who may have attracted attention in “The Mandalorian” but was frankly boring in “Wonder Woman 1984.”  He’s immensely likable here, and builds a great rapport with his co-star.

The rest of the cast is fine, though Haddish and Barinholtz are stuck with material that has no zip in roles than turn out to be pretty extraneous.  That’s not exceptional: Gormican’s script is an awfully ramshackle business, with as many elements stumbling as those that succeed.  And his direction is lackadaisical.  It’s a good thing that he gives Cage and Pascal so much leeway, but his handling of the big action scenes, which really need to be slick in the old style, is clumsy.  The raggedness, italicized by Melissa Bretherton’s sometimes slipshod editing, undermines the movie’s last act badly.

In that regard criticism must also fall on Nigel Bluck’s cinematography, but to compensate his work with the gorgeous locations (actually Croatian, not Spanish) and the attractive production design (Kevin Kavanaugh) and costumes (Paco Delgado) is first rate.  Mark Isham’s score is effective enough in a fairly ordinary way.

The good outweighs the bad in “Unbearable,” but not by enough.