Cage shines through darkness

How Gore Verbinski made his way from “The Ring” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” to “The Weather Man” is a bit confusing. Taking on an eclectic, dead pan comedy after two box office gold mines seems out of character for most Hollywood directors.

Verbinski teamed with an ultimate novice screenwriter, Steven Conrad, and sandwiched his “Pirates” series with an earnest, albeit humorous look at a man and his mid-life crisis.

But if it weren’t for Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine, the film would’ve drowned under a sea of dark comedy.

Cage returns to “Adaptation” form, opting to leave his fluffy action films for a much more substantial role — something he did with regularity before diving headlong into badass bravado, playing long-haired cons and villainous face traders.

Cage encapsulates the “refreshing” persona of David Spritz — formerly David Spritzal, he changed it for TV — a Chicago weatherman, who finds peace in archery. Spritz is divorced with two children and is vying for a spot on the leading national station in New York, “Hello America.”

Spritz must deal with his 12-year-old daughter Shelly (Gemmenne de la Pena), who is overweight and already unsure of what she wants to do with her life, and his 15-year-old son Mike (Nicholas Hoult), who is in drug rehab, all the while attempting to cope with his father’s bout with cancer.

David’s father Robert (Caine) was a Pulitzer prize winner at 33, and David often finds his job elementary compared to his father’s accomplishments. His wife left him after a hilarious incident with tartar sauce, among other things. But Spritz is under the delusion that the $1.2 million that comes with the spot on “Hello America” will be all he needs to steer his life back on course.

Through several flashbacks and well-written voice-overs, Gorbenski does an adequate job of exploring Spritz’s multi-tracked mind. The internal monologues are painstakingly funny but would be better placed if they were fewer and farther between.

It’s interesting that Conrad decides to leave Spritz without an earth-shattering revelation from his father except for Robert telling his son that sometimes “you just have to chuck things.”

Caine serves as an excellent supporting character as is usually the case, playing a distant father figure who is struggling internally with his own failures as a parent. The two child actors don’t over act their situations, but it’s difficult to ignore Hoult’s, who made his debut in the British comedy “About a Boy”, feeble attempt and an American accent.

Cage’s smug countenance makes the lurid comedy work, and although vulgar, the on-going joke about an adolescent girl in a pair of spandex pants provides several laughs — somehow Conrad puts a virtuous spin on the female anatomy.

The clichéd life lesson’s are plenty — money doesn’t buy happiness, be who you are, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, etc. — and the only reason they’re worth stomaching is Spritz’s genuine disregard for morality during his whirlwind ride to a true “American accomplishment.”

Grade: B-