Over the past, say, eight years, I have noticed the emergence of a new genre in film. I call it the Middle-Aged Coming of Age Story. It started to pick up steam in 1997 with "As Good As It Gets," which proved that no matter how old or how grumpy you are, you still have a chance to get in Helen Hunt's pants. Other entries in this particular oeuvre include "American Beauty," "The Ice Storm," "Sideways" and even "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." All of these movies concern middle-aged men who decide to make significant life changes, usually ones which involve quitting their jobs, telling off a loved one (usually an annoying friend or spouse) and sleeping with a beautiful woman.
In the old days (like, say, the '70s), characters like these used to be seen as sad and somewhat pathetic; now they are lionized. Why is that? Is it because baby boomer directors, critics and audiences are getting older too and are empathizing a little bit more with their middle-aged brethren? Has our society loosened up to the point where 40-something guys acting out their fantasies are now acceptable? The answer to both of these questions is yes, but I really don't think they are the reasons we're seeing more and more of these films. I think the real reason for the popularity of these movies is that something about them taps into the restless nature of the human spirit and our own desire for self-improvement. Here are men who have been defined in their lives, rightly or wrongly, as losers; in fact, most of them have been losers for so long, they have no idea what a winner looks like. Then one day, they make the decision that they are tired of victim hood, and set out to make a change. There's something noble about that, even if some of the actions these characters take (extramarital affairs, drug use, etc.) are not.
"The Weather Man", the new film from director Gore Verbinski ("The Ring"), is the newest addition to the Middle-Aged Coming of Age Story, and it is, I think, one of the best forays into this genre, behind only "American Beauty" and maybe "Sideways." It's that good. It's one of those movies that give me a special kind of pleasure — it's small, rough and, quite often, blisteringly funny. There will be people who are turned off by what they perceive as unrelenting bleakness, but for me, the movie was more hopeful than it was depressing. It tells the story of an underachiever deciding to go out and make life better for himself and the people he loves. Is he successful? Not really, but his heart is in the right place.
The underachiever in question is Chicago weatherman Dave Spritz, played by Nicolas Cage with a kind of quiet despair characteristic of a man who realizes his life is a disappointment. He's divorced from his wife Noreen (Hope Davis, "About Schmidt"), and while he has a civil relationship with her, one can't escape the notion that it could go downhill at any time. He loves his kids, Shelly (Gemmenne De la Pena, "Erin Brockovich") and Mike (Nicholas Hoult, "About a Boy"), but he's too self-absorbed and unfocused to realize just how unhappy they are. Lately, he's taken to driving out to his old house in Evanston and sitting in the car outside the house, just watching his family go about their lives. The one person he manages to have a somewhat healthy relationship with is his father, Robert (Michael Caine, "The Cider House Rules"), a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who at the begining of the movie is diagnosed with lymphoma. Robert looks at his son with the kind of quiet despair and disappointment unique to a parent who sees their child frittering away their potential. Robert isn't disappointed with Dave because he reports the weather for a living, or because he's divorced. He's disappointed because he is watching his son, his own flesh and blood, coast through life with little or no effort. Dave's not even a meteorologist — he just gets his data from computer printouts. Perhaps realizing that Dave doesn't apply himself to (or particularly care about) his work, many viewers have started to throw fast food at him, which perplexes Robert, and seemingly has no effect on Dave. This, of course, is Dave's problem — he's grown numb to life. Even the possibility of moving to New York and starting over again as a weatherman on a national morning show doesn't excite Dave. It's his chance to start over again and get salvation, but he's sunken so low, he's not even sure he's worthy of being saved.
The key relationship in the movie is that of Dave and his father. Robert doesn't hate his son and he doesn't belittle him. Steve Conrad's script is too smart to make Robert so overtly cruel that an overbearing father may explain away Dave's shortcomings. Robert is more puzzled by his son than he is enraged. He simply cannot understand why he has to give the same life lessons to his son at 40 that he did when Dave was 14. He doesn't want to change his son's life; he just wants him to stop acting like a kid all the time. Dave is still making the mistakes you would expect from a middle-school kid. One of the best ongoing jokes in the movie is how Robert has to constantly remind Dave to carry more than a single dollar in his wallet. Robert is an old-school guy; he fundamentally cannot understand why his son has such an aversion to buckling down and applying himself. He quietly tells Dave "the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing." As an actor, Caine is perfectly suited for this role. He has cobalt blue eyes that never seem to blink, making him look perpetually focused on Dave — the same way we are — looking over the edges of his spectacles, trying to figure out how exactly this person he sees before him could be his offspring. It could be the best performance of Caine's long career.
Indeed, it seems like Dave is in a state of arrested development. As played by Cage, Dave is a slouching, scowling disorganized teenager in a 40-year-old body. He doesn't listen to what anybody says to him, his mind wanders and he is prone to making odd gestures that he interprets as meaningful, like when he slaps his wife's new boyfriend across the face with a glove in front of his entire family. Cage's performance reminded me of why people considered him one the best actors of his generation: he's restrained, thoughtful and, quite often, dryly funny. What elevates the movie above other entries in the genre is the way Dave wants to better himself. He doesn't go out and smoke pot to try and reconnect with himself. Instead, he spends his time trying to get to know his wife, kids and father better. Does he succeed? Well, sort of. Like everything else in his life, Dave's attempts to teach life lessons to his kids and gleam them from his father are only half-successful. He may teach his daughter about the importance of seeing a task through by forcing her to finish a sack-race, but in the process, he succeeds at making her tear her ACL; which was especially funny to me, considering the exact same thing happened to my ex-girlfriend when I tried to force her to finish our own three-legged race two summers ago. Robert spends his last days on earth with Dave, desperately trying to teach him valuable lessons about the importance of hard-work and self-sacrifice, but possibly the most important thing Dave learns from spending time with his dying father is his revelation after the glove-slapping incident, when it strikes Dave that "if you don't want your father to think you are a silly f-ck, don't slap a man across the face with a glove." This is one of those things that most people probably know, but then again, Dave Spritz isn't like most people. For Dave Spritz, it's a small revelation on the long, torturous road to salvation.
The movie is being criticized for being too downbeat, but if anything, I think the message of the movie is overwhelmingly positive. It shows us that no matter how poorly things are going, there's always going to be an opportunity to buckle down and turn it all around. If Dave Spritz can emerge from the abyss, anybody can. Sure, it may not be easy, but then again, as Robert tells Dave shortly before his death, easy doesn't enter into grown-up life.
Grade: AB
