Nico­las Cage plays him­self in The Unbear­able Weight of Mas­sive Tal­ent trailer

As much as he might seem to have it all fig­ured out, Nico­las Cage has the same prob­lems as all of us nor­mal folks who aren’t gods of the act­ing arts. Name­ly, mon­ey, and need­ing it – if you won­der why he seems to do twelve movies every year, most of which are fly-by-night straight-to-video cheap­ies, it has a lot to do with recoup­ing some bad investments.

That’s the quandary open­ing the trail­er for the new action-com­e­dy The Unbear­able Weight of Mas­sive Tal­ent, which sees Cage por­tray­ing him­self, dis­cussing his finan­cial trou­bles with his good pal Neil Patrick Har­ris (a guy who knows a thing or two about lam­poon­ing his own per­sona onscreen). The man born Nico­las Kim Cop­po­la needs an infu­sion of cash and quick, com­pelling him to take a pri­vate gig land­ing him in the crosshairs of ene­my attackers.

For a cool mil­lion, Cage accepts an invi­ta­tion to appear at the birth­day par­ty of an eccen­tric zil­lion­aire (Pedro Pas­cal) obsessed with the actor and his canon of clas­sic roles, a job that ini­tial­ly seems like a pleas­ant week­end of passed appe­tiz­ers and drug-fueled hijinks with his odd­ball host. But when a heav­i­ly-armed assault storms this get­away, Cage has to step up and tap into his exper­tise honed over an illus­tri­ous career to seize the upper hand.

It appears that this film will have some fun with the meta-sig­nif­i­cance of its lead­ing actor, a per­son­al­i­ty that draws a dif­fer­ent – yet equal­ly pas­sion­ate – opin­ion from every­body. As shown in the exchange between Ike Bar­in­holtz and Tiffany Had­dish, some know him as the ​’90s thriller icon of Face/​Off and Con Air, while oth­ers iden­ti­fy him with less accom­plished recent work like [checks notes] The Croods 2.

In any case, it’ll be pro­duc­tive to see the Cage in a role that proves he has a sense of humor about him­self, for­ev­er dis­pelling the mis­con­cep­tion that he lacks self-aware­ness of his per­son­al­i­ty or per­for­mance style. It’s all delib­er­ate, as we’ll soon see. At any giv­en moment, he knows exact­ly what he’s doing – and now, he’s lit­er­al­ly in on the joke.

The Unbear­able Weight of Mas­sive Tal­ent comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 22 April. A date for the UK has yet to be set.