The Weather man is an adult coming of age/mid-life crisis movie directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) and starring Nicholas cage. Cage is weather man David Spitz (shortened from Spritzel for cuteness purposes) and David is deep in the midst of a mid-life meltdown. professionally he is doing fine. he makes almost a quarter million dollars a year reading the weather on a local Chicago TV station. It's not bad for two hours work a day, except for the occasional beverage thrown at him from people who don't like his forecasts. In addition he is auditioning for a national morning talk show based out of NYC, that could put him at the top of his peer group and make him millions.
It's his personal life that has fallen apart. He is divorced, his son is seeing a counselor for drug abuse and his daughter has gained weight and failing in school. he can't see his ex-wife without arguing with her and he is very contemptuous of her new boyfriend. In addition his father (Micheal Caine) a Nobel prize winning author and self made man is ill and it may be serious.
Cage carries the weight of a depressed man well, and reminds us why he was once considered one of the best actors in America. he supplies a narration throughout the film and their is a brilliant scene about tartar sauce that provides insight into the working of the adult male mind. The films problem is that you never really sympathize with David. All his problems seem to be of his own making. Plus it's hard to care about someone having an existential crisis who makes $250,000 a year.
Caine and Davis are excellent in their supporting roles, especially Caine as the perceptive and loving dad.
The film is shot in blue gray tones of a Chicago winter and it feels cold. It goes off track now and then with multiple sub-plots and a treatise on the American lifestyle as a whole, but as a film about a man coming to terms with his own life's achievements it's pretty good.
At the Movie House rating ** 1/2 stars.
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