The Weather Man Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)November 11th, 2005
THE WEATHER MAN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Hey baby, it's cold outside -- well, maybe not outside, but certainly inside any theater playing Gore Verbinski's THE WEATHER MAN. His PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL may have sizzled like the warm Caribbean sun, but this movie, set in a snowy Chicago, has so little life that it's one degree above being frozen solid. Watching it, nay enduring it, is about as much fun as standing outside in a blizzard for two hours without a coat.
As a sullen and sad weatherman named David Spritz, Nicolas Cage sleepwalks through his performance. Even the great Michael Caine, playing David's dying dad, does absolutely nothing with his role. David makes a quarter of a million dollars a year "reading" the weather for two hours a day on the local television station. Not having a degree in meteorology, David doesn't have a clue about his forecasts. He just parrots what the station's meteorologist tells him. In contrast, his dad was called a "national treasure" by then President Carter and had won the Pulitzer Prize for literature when he was only thirty-three.
Living his life in a constant daze, David only smiles when he is on camera, but that on-the-air smile has all of the warmth and believability of a statue. When I tell you that David has two kids and a wife, do I really need to add that their relationships are all strained to the point of breaking? Cage tries to make David into a lovable loser, but only succeeds with the loser part. His long interior monologues are completely bland and painfully uninteresting.
None of the characters are believable or sympathetic, giving the audience no reason to care and leaving them wondering what the point of the picture could be. It isn't funny or insightful. It isn't much of anything.
I thought a lot about global warming while observing the lack of any warmth on the screen. Perhaps, I thought and hoped, a cataclysmic weather event would strike, killing all of the characters. Like a game of draw poker, I was ready to turn in all of my cards in the certainty that a new hand couldn't be any worse.
THE WEATHER MAN runs a very long 1:42. It is rated R for "strong language and sexual content" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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