Films In Review : Jarhead : The Weatherman

There are some movies that, while watching them, you can't help but wonder what the pitch meeting entailed.

"The Weather Man" is one such film.

A meandering, unamusing, pointless mess, this Nicholas Cage vehicle feels as if someone came up with the idea to do a film about a weather man and didn't bother to sketch a plot, characters or a storyline to support it.

A painfully overdrawn tale about a middle-aged guy who's unhappy with his life, this Gore Verbinski- directed film never should have made it off the cutting room floor, much less in front of unassuming audiences.

The running joke of the film and its sad overriding metaphoric theme is that weathermen are the supermodels of the broadcasting industry. They are overpaid, under worked pretty boys with silly names, and even sillier catch phrase that wave their hands in front of a green screen and smile for the camera.

As Dave Spritz, a Chicago weatherman, Cage is constantly confronted by the hatred of his friends and neighbors by being continually pelted with various food and drink items. THIS is both the big gag, and the point, of "The Weather Man."

While it's presumably funny to see Cage being hit by ice cream shakes and sodas, it's also more: Our hero is a clown suffering a repeated metaphorical pie to the face.

A divorced dad, with an overweight daughter and a son seeing a drug counselor (there is mention of pot use but nothing is explored or explained), Dave is constantly reminded of his shortcomings in the form of incoming Big Gulps, Chicken McNuggets, Frosties and various other fast food drinks and food items.

At one point Dave chronicles, in voiceover, the history of his being pelted with food, pointing out that it's always fast food which is thrown because he is, like it, a high calorie treat with no nutritional value.

As Dave wanders around Chicago shuttling his Nobel Prize-winning author dad (Michael Caine) to the doctor and trying to reconnect with his kids and estranged ex-wife (Hope Davis), the food items that suddenly land on his overcoat change, but not much else.

The idea propelling "The Weather Man" forward is that our titular wind forecaster, who repeatedly whines about the fact that he's not even a meteorologist, is trying to become a decent man. But of course life, like the weather, is ultimately unpredictable. That it takes "The Weather Man" over an hour of film-which shows Dave cursing at his wife, trying in vain to get through to his chubby and distant daughter and cringing at the disapproving glare of his beloved and respected dad-to offer this clichéd message in bit of forced dialog is a testament to how little is happening here.

That we never find out how or why Dave messed up his life to begin with-his marriage ended, presumably, because he's self-absorbed and curses a lot-is just one shortcoming of a film which never makes a case for why it's following its central character to begin with.

Will something happen to Dave? Will Dave do something himself? Will a hurricane hit the Windy City and our local weatherman will need to save the day?

Sadly, no. The only thing to wait for in "The Weather Man" is the end credits, which don't come soon enough.

Grade: D-