"The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" - Review

Nicolas Cage is on the ropes. He is courting David Gordon Green for another movie, but his constant workload is getting to him, he's in debt, his wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan, always welcome) is demanding he get his shit together for the sake of his 16 year old daughter Addy (Lilly Sheen) who has grown frustrated with his ego and emotional distance. When he gets an offer from Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal), to come to his birthday party for $1,000,000, the Hollywood superstar (haunted by his sub-conscious alter-ego "Nicky" who pushes for him to be a movie star rather than an actor) has no choice but to accept.
He ends up caught up in a plot to kill Javi and rescue the daughter of a President he and his cartel have kidnapped, overseen by two CIA operatives (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz), though the blossoming friendship between himself and Javi causes some tension and friction, all coming to a head in unexpected ways...

The film is burdened, see what I did there, with the legends of Nicolas Cage and his meme-like status; so even out of the gate has expectations for what this project is:
"Of COURSE Nicolas Cage is making this."
"Well duh, that's the most Nicolas Cage movie around!"
"Jesus fucking Christ..."
But here's the thing:
Nicolas Cage has always not only been a great actor, but a self-aware one. He's got a lot of nuance and range to him, and here is not just playing up a party parody version of himself. Well, he does do that in some rather amusing and inspired scenes as "Nicky" (complete with leather jacket and 90s/00s haircut), but the film is actually more about our perceptions of art, public personas VS one's true self, and self-contemplation and reflection.
I know that that all sounds rather heavy, and the film doesn't exactly stray into "JCVD" territory, breaking itself up with some excellent jokes, wonderful banter/rapport and EXCELLENT chemistry between Cage and Pascal (who frequently gets the most pathos for his character). It is a breezy, meta-textual romp and not only a fun comedy in its own right but a celebration and examination of art and Hollywood (there are a few fun discussions about the screenplay within a screenplay, and the marketing it would entail, and a funny Michael Bay's "The Rock" piss take at the end, lovingly observed) but it remembers never to fall to sycophancy and hagiography. It keeps its head on tightly, remembering characters and its love of the medium. As a result it keeps itself from feeling like a vanity project and ironically gives Cage some of his best stuff to date (obviously "Pig" is God-Tier Cage, almost untouchable).
It's very funny too. And Ike Barinholtz gets a few good laughs as a foul-mouthed CIA operative.