The Weather Man

David Spritz (Nicolas Cage, right) and his father, author Robert Spritzel (Michael Caine, left),
in “The Weather Man.” Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon. Copyright © 2004
by PARAMOUNT PICTURES. All Rights Reserved.

 
There appear to be two different movies occurring at the same time in Gore Verbinski’s “The Weather Man.” One film is about David Spritz (Nicolas Cage), a Chicago weather anchor, whose career is interrupted by his family and his Pulitzer-prize winning father, Robert Spritzel (Michael Caine), by whom his sense of substantive accomplishment is vastly overshadowed. The other film is about a family’s post-divorce struggles, the paternal wisdom of an experienced author, Robert Spritzel, and how these forces influence the self-occupied existence of his son, David Spritz—a weather anchor. Of the two, I prefer the latter.

This is the second movie I’ve reviewed this year in which I’ve noticed the seeming necessity of having Nicolas Cage voice-over scenes as though his conscience were narrating. A recent headline in The Onion read, “Morgan Freeman Narrates Uncontrollably.” Some actors just have that presence in their voice, I guess. But, if Nicolas Cage exhibits any particular voice talent, it could be described in a book titled, “The Art of Perpetual Constipation.”

David Spritz, the local weather anchor for Channel 6, wakes up in his posh lakeshore Chicago apartment. While preparing for work in his daily routine, his mind centers on whether or not the people from Bryant Gumbel’s Hello America called regarding his recent job interview. As he attempts to make his way to work, he gets a parking ticket. Waiting at the DMV to deal with his ticket, a man asks him for an autograph. Spritz gets rather bent out of shape about it, telling the guy he’s not who he appears—holding a form that happens to have the name “David Spritz” on it. Spritz observes, “People recognize me sometimes. Some are dicks.”

David’s largest struggle is with himself. Because he’s well known, and (as I’ve observed about my own popularity in high school), as being well-known doesn’t necessarily equate to being well-liked, product placement after product placement (i.e. every brand of fast food) is hurled at him by people unhappy with his “point and guess” brand of meteorology—for which, it’s noted, he holds no academic degree. An ironic statement, perhaps unintended, is made when it’s revealed that the contract David may be offered by Hello America is contigent on a compulsory product endorsement. Hah.

While David takes up archery lessons along with his daughter to get in touch with his inner vacuity, it doesn’t come across as anything except filler. This attempt at character development seems to be aimed at establishing that, while he gets more and more disinterested in his daily job, he finally decides to become focused on archery—a skill entirely about focus. However, the point of this experience is eviscerated and abandoned when all David’s acquired proficiency teaches him is that he may be able to exorcise some of his frustration with life by scaring the hell out of his ex-wife’s new husband-to-be. “In Her Shoes” goes much farther, in a more realistic and cogent manner, in exploring such shifts in priorities.

Spritz, divorced, picks up his daughter, Shelly (Gemmenne de la Peña), from ballet lessons. Shelly asks to borrow money from her father, only to use it to buy cigarettes in his absence. While this scene may prove all too true to parents who know their children apparently better than David knows his, it doesn’t seem to play naturally. But that’s how most of the subplots involving David’s children tend to unfold in this mishmash dram… comed… Whatever it’s trying to be.

His other child, Mike (Nicholas Hoult, looking a bit like a younger Ricky Fitts from “American Beauty”), has an uncomfortably close relationship with his counselor, Don Boden (Gil Bellows), the outcome of which most moviegoers will see coming a mile away. Boden offers to buy Mike clothes, a camera, and takes him to movies, apparently out of the goodness of his heart… or not, if you want to imagine the predictable route this subplot could take. The problem isn’t whether or not this peripheral story takes the banal route of the adult figure taking advantage of the child. The problem is that it leads to a pedestrian outcome where nothing of significance is learned by the characters or you, the audience.

The driving element that makes this movie enjoyable on at least some levels is Michael Caine. Call it experience, or proper casting, or both, Caine’s performance as a father figure is as appropriate for the relationship with David here as it was for the relationship between his Alfred Pennyworth to Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne in “Batman Begins.” When Robert says he doesn’t understand many of the melodramas that occupy the lives of David, David’s ex-wife Noreen (Hope Davis) and his grandchildren, he’s not saying he’s too old to comprehend the nuances of modern life. Robert’s trying to tell his son that life is too short for these mediocre preoccupations. “This shit life,” he says,”We must chuck some things.”

The beginnings of a working relationship between David and his kids seems to form, but I think it’s obstructed by the writing. The kids are pencilled in so tentatively, as if the writer was trying to gain insight about kids by polling parents just as detached and self-centered as Mike and Shelly’s. That’s not the answer in a film that wants to be as introspective as this one. The children end up seeming stupid, which is insulting given just how much kids really do have to say about themselves and the peculiarities of the world they inhabit. There is a seminal rule in screenwriting that advises, “Write what you know.” Suffice it to say, screenwriter Steven Conrad has only three completed films under his belt—none of which dive heavily into the inner workings of a child’s mind.

While John Hughes also wrote about the lives of characters in upper-income families, he didn’t start with the adults and try to shoehorn the children in. He started by understanding, and not underestimating, the children, and surrounded them with parental forces as the periphery. It’s easy to dismiss David and Noreen’s issues and yell at the screen telling them to get over themselves. What’s tougher in depicting such breakups on-screen is dealing with the kids caught in the middle. They don’t choose which circumstances to be born in, be it poverty or an upper-class existence where the most gut-wrenching decision of the day is whether or not the ex-husband should move away to take that $1 million a year job versus the $250,000 salary he holds now. It’s not impossible to work the story from one angle, but “The Weather Man” attempts two, leaning heavily on the extraordinarily resolvable problems of the parents.

Any mature couple that has learned not to sweat the small stuff will find themselves pissed off when they see the magnitude of arguments that led to the couple’s divorce—especially given how inconsiderate it was to the children. Maybe that is the point, but how it affects the children isn’t really explored. Thus, all we’re left to think about is how it affects these almost insufferable adults who are less mature than the children to whom they’re supposed to be role models.

Though it’s not fair to judge this film for what I think it should be, rather than what it intends, the failure here is that the writing and the direction aren’t taut enough to keep the two perspectives, adult-to-child vs. child-to-adult, from constantly fighting with each other… leaving the film a slightly bigger mess than David’s divorce.

The Weather Man • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • MPAA Rating: R for strong language and sexual content. • Distributed by Paramount Pictures