It’s a terrific role for Cage, whose widest smile always contains a flicker of anguish. And Caine is excellent as the unattainable father figure in this enjoyably downbeat tale of the flipside of career success

| Dec 13, 2023

Written by Steve Conrad, this is the smartest script director Gore Verbinski has ever had, and he makes the most of it, aided by a strong cast.

| Jun 28, 2022

It's a deeply honest and comic performance and seems filled with all the genuine humiliations that one imagines Cage himself has suffered in the past 10 years.

| Jan 17, 2018

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 6, 2005

In the face of a character no one cares about, can audiences be faulted for asking: Why should we?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 3, 2005

The most supremely odd American film of the year.

Full Review | Nov 1, 2005

[Verbinski] and Steven Conrad hold their ground, sticking to their conviction that Dave's story should play as a belated-coming-of-age movie.

Full Review | Nov 1, 2005

It's a strange film.

Full Review | Oct 31, 2005

Toward the end of the film Spritzel remarks on his son's deeds by calling them 'an American accomplishment.' At once superficial and yet meaningful, the phrase encapsulates the paradox of our -- and this film's -- dreams and ambitions.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 30, 2005

No, Steve Conrad's dazzling script is something else entirely. It's life, and not just any life, but that of an ordinary man looking through the prisms of his apprehensions and asking, 'Is this really all I am?'

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 29, 2005

Succeeds where so few Hollywood movies even venture - it builds a believable life, adds just enough nervous laughter to relieve the realistic tension, and constantly escapes the dumbed-down expectations beaten into us by lesser films.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 28, 2005

Dave's self-involvement is so extreme that he can't see that the bluntly human weaknesses of the people around him aren't his fault. We both pity him and want to shake him; eventually, though, we just become bored by him.

| Oct 28, 2005

This is one glum outing, with occasional pings of wry wit and hearty chuckles.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 28, 2005

Like the chilly winds that blow throughout it, The Weather Man is cold, grim, erratic and eventually just relentless.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 28, 2005

It's all believable enough, but it never sings.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 28, 2005

The film has a lot of rough edges. But it works as an intriguingly offbeat character study while offering Nicolas Cage a chance to show why he used to be considered one of the top actors of his generation.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 28, 2005

A vague hint at spiritual rebirth in the closing seconds does nothing to wash away the acid taste of this character, and he's all there is to the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 28, 2005

What The Weather Man needed was a change in its weather -- a certain kind of humor, to be precise, something like the deadpan but human satire of Alexander Payne's About Schmidt.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 28, 2005

I see no reason, apart from chronic yuppie passive-aggression, why Dave shouldn't get over himself and wipe that giant 'L' off his forehead.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 28, 2005