The Weather Man is one of those poorly marketed films that I just can’t get a handle on what it’s about. It’s suffering from the same marketing mistakes that Stay had… and I fear will suffer the same box office results as well.
The Weather Man stars Nicolas Cage… who I’ve been starting to appreciate more and more again in recent years. Add along side him Michael Cain and you’ve got a double blast of Oscar winners. But so far… the critics aren’t sold on it. As of this moment The Weather Man is holding a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Split right down the middle.
Here’s what some of the critics are saying:
“… small-scale, character-driven, and textured in a way that I found quite involving.”
Moriarty, AIN’T IT COOL MOVIE REVIEWS“The movie blows all over the place, too, as its meandering plotlines do flesh out this portrait of a success who believes himself a failure, but never expands any further.”
Kirk Honeycutt, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER“This may be a great film for people out of touch with how their negative behaviors effect those they love.”
Ross Anthony, HOLLYWOOD REPORT CARD“One of the biggest downers to emerge from a major studio in recent memory.”
Justin Chang, VARIETY
So it looks like it could be hit or miss. But like I said… it’s the same problem as Stay, only not quite as bad. The trailers don’t really give me much of an idea what I’ll be walking into if I buy a ticket. All I know is that Cage is a dad. Whhheee. Oh well… I’ll still see it… but only for Cage and Cain.
John how can you say that the movie suffered from poor marketing. Haven’t you seen any of the TV spots at all. I thought the TV spots were just ingenius. They were clever as well. When i saw the theatrical trailer I had a clear idea on what was going on.
I do have to agree on Seitz’s comment about having the same trailer for just a little less than a year though.
Note also in the above films that only Se7en was successful at the box-office, but all have had excellent lives on DVD and have large fan-cults…
Oh, yea, Add Donnie Darko & I heart Huckabees to that list as well….
I’m usually a big fan of movies that Hollywood has trouble marketing:
Gattaca, Fight Club, Se7en, The Usual Suspects, The Frighteners, all had trailers which had trouble selling the film and failed miserably at getting ‘the point’ of the film across in short-form.
I’m actually really looking foward to THE WEATHER MAN. I like it when Cage is doing his ‘sad-man’ character (Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation (charlie-not donald), Vamp)
Shut the fuck up John.
I think that the biggest problem with this movie is that they’ve been showing trailers for it forever. They’ve been pushing the same trailer for almost a year. Anyone who was interested is probably just going to forget about this movie.