Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

I’d like to start this article by saying I did zero research prior to writing it.

So at face value this is a film about a man (Pedro Pascal) who loves Nicolas Cage. Nicolas Cage plays a semi-fictional version of himself who is seemingly at the end of his acting career, trying desperately to land roles and sadly failing miserably at it. Concordantly this fictional version of Nicolas Cage is also failing at his relationship with his fictional daughter and fictional ex-wife. One could argue the relationship with the ex-wife already has failed. Hence the ex. Needing money, fictional Nicolas… you know what, I’m just going to call him Fic Nic from here on out. Don’t repeat that name to your Oma though.

So Ficnic accepts this strange offer from Pedro Pascal (not a fictional Pedro Pascal mind you but Pedro Pascal playing a fictional character who is NOT Pedro Pascal.) For a large sum of money Ficnic is supposed to come to a party at Pedro’s villa. That’s it.

The trouble is Pedro is suspected of kidnapping the daughter of some important person. And before Ficnic gets to that party, he’s accosted by some investigators who want to use him to spy on Pedro.

This leads to Ficnic suggesting he and Pedro write a movie together as an excuse to stick around longer. Complicating matters is the fact that Ficnic actually starts to enjoy Pedro’s company.

I know I don’t usually go into full synopses in these articles but I felt in this case it was necessary. The fact that Nicolas Cage is playing Nicolas Cage raises a lot of questions. Is this a true story? No. Is Nicolas Cage just playing the part of an actor named Nicolas Cage? Basically, yes, but constant references are made to actual movies Nicolas Cage has been in and they’re not simply references or homages. In one case they mention the film Guarding Tess. In a later scene Ficnic is actually watching Guarding Tess. It’s almost a kind of meta situation like we see in Being John Malkovich just replace the magical doorway into John Mallovich’s head with a political kidnapping plot.

Another question: Was this movie dependent on the character in the film being Nicolas Cage? Perhaps not, and yet I think the impact would be lost if we were just watching a story about some random actor getting into a fish-out-of-water plot. We’ve seen that before. Such was the plot of Galaxy Quest. Would that movie have been a lot funnier if it was actually Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Daryl Mitchell and Sam Rockwell who got transported into a space adventure and not simply characters they were playing? I would argue, yes, as great as that movie was, it would’ve been a lot funnier that way. Imagine the reality show Better Late Than Never but in space.

So yes, it was fun watching Nicolas Cage be Nicolas Cage and see everyone in the movie react to his involvement in this plot as if he was actually Nicolas Cage because he actually was Nicolas Cage. It’s like they asked him if he wanted to be a superhero and he said “Nicolas Cage IS a superhero!” And the gnomes responded with “Yes, sir! Right away, sir!”

Remember the scene in the Simpsons when Lucy Lawless, dressed as Xena Warrior Princess, picked up Bart and Lisa and promptly flew off into the sunset. Lisa says “Wait, Xena can’t fly!” To which Lucy replies, “I told you, I’m not Xena, I’m Lucy Lawless.” Yeah, it’s like that.

Throughout the film there was a hilarious correlation between the movie Ficnic and Pedro were postulating and the actual events they were going through. It was almost as if they were describing what was happening as it happened and I had to wonder, are we just watching their own ideas unfold as they hatch them? Am I watching the movie they are currently dreaming up? Is this all just a bad acid trip? I won’t answer those questions here but it was fun to speculate as I watched.

Pedro Pascal is absolutely hilarious in this as well. I could do a whole separate article on his performance. I really enjoyed this movie. I highly recommend it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri and Padington 2.