My World of Flops, No Thank U Next Case File #202/The Travolta/Cage Project #87 Next (2007)
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A few entries back, I foolishly wondered how it was even possible for a movie starring Nicolas Cage as an Evel Knievel-inspired superhero who worked for the motherfucking DEVIL as a bounty hunter and had a flaming skull could be anything other than awesome.
Then I re-watched Ghost Rider and discovered exactly how it was possible for a seemingly can’t miss, fool-proof proposition like that to miss by a mile.
That somehow did not keep me from once again wondering how a Phillip K. Dick-inspired science fiction movie where Nicolas Cage plays a flashy Las Vegas magician who can see two minutes into the future could be anything other than an absolute blast, a goddamn delight, a quintessential guilty pleasure.
Then I re-watched Next and once again discovered just how a movie with seemingly so much going for it can end up feeling like a shabby little nothing that barely feels like a movie.
Since Next is based on a short story I suspected its chintziness might have something to do with it being inspired by a brief bit of fiction too slight for a three act motion picture, even one this decidedly minor.
It turns out that Next has next to nothing to do with its ostensible source material, the 1954 short story “The Golden Man” beyond the concept of seeing into the future. Dick’s story takes place in a post-apocalyptic future and concerns the title figure, a telekinetic mutant with gold skin and the body of a greek god who is hunted by the government as a threat to humanity.
Next, in very sharp contrast, takes place in the non-apocalyptic present and centers on Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage), a flashy magician with the gift of precognition who performs under the stage name Frank Cadillac in honor of two of his favorite things: Frankenstein and Cadillacs.
It was unsurprisingly Cage’s idea to make his character a Las Vegas magician. The film’s best scenes find Chris Johnson in his element, camping it up for easily amused tourists in the tackiest, most American place in the world, with the possible exception of Disney Land.
I would happily watch Cage do magic for a solid hour but director Lee Tamagori and his screenwriters labor under the delusion that the hero working as a magician is the boring part of the film, and one that should be rushed through as quickly as possible in order to get to what they clearly see as the exciting parts.
Because he can see into the future, but only for 120 seconds or so Cris inhabits a different world than everyone around him. Since he knows exactly what’s going to happen in the very near future he can anticipate what everyone around him will do and react accordingly.
This leads to a few inspired moments early on, like when Cris approaches a mystery woman played by Jessica Biel and uses his powers to ascertain which opening lines will get a bad reception and which ones will get a really bad response.
Our hero’s powers of precognition turn him into a fighting machine who is always at least 90 seconds ahead of whoever is trying to beat him up. The Groundhog Day meets Equilibrium vibe of Next’s first twenty minutes is dumb, cheesy fun but it doesn’t take long for the movie to begin moving in the most uninteresting possible direction.
In its deeply tedious second act Next becomes a white-bread, vanilla romance between a man with special powers and Elizabeth Cooper (Jessica Biel), a woman who haunts his thoughts and plays a crucial role in his future.
One of Cage’s great strengths as a leading man has been his chemistry with his leading ladies. City of Angels works far better than it should because he legitimately makes us believe that he would give up paradise itself for an opportunity to be with Meg Ryan’s doctor.
Cage and Biel have no chemistry however. That might have something to do with Cage being forty-three years old when Next was released and Biel being twenty-five. Cage is consequently old enough to be his leading lady’s father.
We’re inherently more skeptical of romances with massive age gaps these days. That’s a very good thing for the most part. I would like to think that the days of pairing dudes in their forties with female love interests barely old enough to drink are coming to an end.
At the very least we’ve evolved as a culture to a place where we acknowledge that when a romantic lead is in his forties and the female lead is in her twenties there’s almost invariably a power imbalance that can be troubling.
It does not help that when Next was made Biel was widely considered one of the most beautiful women in the world while Cage was wrestling with middle age and male pattern baldness.
The non-starting romance between Cage and Biel eventually gives way to equally generic action shenanigans involving Criss’ attempts to stay one step ahead of both terrorists out to detonate a nuclear bomb and an NSA agent played by Julianne Moore in the very definition of a paycheck role.
What’s the point of setting a movie in Las Vegas if you’re going to stage key set-pieces in a goddamn parking garage? Next starts out fun but gets progressively less compelling as it proceeds
Next’s twist ending merits little more than a bored shrug. The same is true of the film itself, a would-be guilty pleasure that’s short on pleasure as well as inspiration.
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