 🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 615: 12.08.22 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 30. After gutting out the horror of Ghost Rider, I thought I had endured another, thankfully rare, low point in the esteemed career of Nicolas Cage. Little did I know, right around the corner, there would be not one, but TWO movies that were somehow even worse. While this isn't quite as bad as Gone in 60 Seconds, Guarding Tess is currently sitting pretty in the #2 position for worst Cage flicks ever. It's boring as hell and unfunny. It's unfathomably lazy and it sucks ass. It's 1994's Guarding Tess! And it's times like these that make me wonder why I still do this exhaustive project. (And I still have to watch the goddam Ghost Rider sequel!!) |
Directed by Hugh Wilson (the auteur behind the original Police Academy, the chick flick schlock The First Wives Club and the Brendan Fraser-starring, slapstick Canadian Mountie flick, Dudley Do-Right), we get the gist of this one immediately. It's going to be exactly like what you think it is. The jokes will be safe, the drama will be wrought and these two all-timer A-list leads will be sure to have some delightful banter throughout!
Cage meets with his superior and gets the bad news that Tess, the former First Lady, a widow and beloved national treasure who has made his life both a bore and an annoying hell, has requested he return to his post for another THREE YEARS. Wanting to get back to some real Secret Service action — guarding the current Commander-in-Chief who served as Tess's husband's Vice President — Cage is not happy. He returns to the country home in Ohio and reunites with the crew, a group of other agents and household staff, a plethora of THAT GUY character actors...
Cage and Tess have their first encounter after his return and the tension is boiling... I guess...
None of the jokes are funny. Take this exchange during an impromptu trip the gold course...
"Synchronized swimming" is not a punchline. It isn't anything. It's not so much that the jokes are safe, it's that they're nonexistent.
Cage then gets a call from the current President who lays down the law and tells him what's what...
They go to the opera in Columbus where hijinks ensue. Tess starts to fall asleep and Cage, in an effort to help her, ends up startling her awake and her wig falls off in the balcony for all the crowd to see. It's a fairly excruciating bit of lame physical comedy. Later, in the lobby, an embarrassed Tess finds that the crowd is ecstatic just to be in her presence....
These older movies love little moments like that and the actor trying to get an autograph nails her one line. If the film had just been a collection of moments like that everything would have been fine. It still would have been incredibly boring, but basically fine for what it is. But director Wilson and co-writer Peter Torokvei (best known for screenplay credits on a bunch of 80s comedies like Real Genius and Harold Ramis collabs, Back to School and Caddyshack II among others) can't help themselves by shoehorning in the most asinine asides. Like this boxing analogy convo between two agents while they're getting gas on their way home from Columbus...
After distracting the agents, Tess gets her driver Earl to peel out of the gas station and take her on a little joyride. The actor who plays the chauffeur is Austin Pendleton and he's tremendous. When they finally return to the estate, he and Cage have it out...
Then Cage gets mad at Tess...
That fight lasts like three minutes and it's just the same points being made over and over again in different ways. They've had that conversation like five times already.
Cage decides he is DONE with this shit once and for all after that stunt, only the President calls him again (while he's on the toilet LoL) and they have the exact same conversation they had before (he can't quit) and so we're back to square one. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
The legendary English actor Richard Griffiths plays Tess's chef Frederick and he does a little comedy routine that — you're not gonna believe this — dies on the vine....
It's just all so painfully unfunny. Tess's son shows up next and he basically wants her to endorse a shady business deal politically and she tells him no. It's a meaningless subplot that goes nowhere (other than to show you that she doesn't have anyone in her life that she's close to).
We cut to Christmas time and a sad Tess is watching old cassettes of news footage of her and her husband, the former President who died in office. She then watches the funeral coverage (which... OK?) and notices Cage is visibly upset at the service. So this prompts her to go outside and make amends with Cage who's waiting in the driveway and she startles him and he spills coffee all over himself ...
Cage and Tess finally make some headway in repairing their relationship. We learn that the current President is coming to visit their small town for the Presidential Library opening dedicated to her late hubby. This is a big deal for everybody as both Tess and the Secret Service agents feel relevant again. To celebrate they go to the grocery store and do some price check comedy...
Sadly, however, this joyous mood is cut short as the President can't make the library opening after all. And so Tess takes solace in the fact that her and Cage are finally buddies. Being the weirdo that she is, she requests a picnic by the lake with just Cage even though it's winter.
Now. Here is the point where the movie goes from a simple "not for me" offering to an offensively bad one. While picnicking, Tess falls asleep and Cage carries her back to the car. Then, while Cage is distracted cleaning up, Earl the driver peels off...
At first, we're meant to think this is just another one of her joyride stunts. But as it turns out, she's been kidnapped! When they find Earl, he says it was Arab terrorists?! Who, what now? Snuck up on them while they were out at that wide open secluded lake?? He's in the hospital recovering from a nasty burn he got (somehow!) fending off these kidnappers. Naturally — just like any audience member with half a working brain — Cage isn't buying that story. He confronts Earl in the hospital about his batshit tail because he thinks Tess gave him that burn with the car's cigarette lighter...
Look, that scene in and of itself isn't bad. Austin Pendleton is a damn good actor! Cage is going psycho mode! It's the probably the most entertaining five minutes of the movie honestly. I mean, Cage fucking shoots him in his hospital bed! But, holy shit what a lazy-ass plot twist to set off one final, completely over-the-top conflict. At no point, was there any indication Earl was nothing but a simple, kind and loyal servant. They actually went out of their way to point out that Tess handpicked him to be her personal driver against the wishes of the Secret Service! It would have made more sense if it had been ultra-sneaky Arab terrorists.
Anyway, if you can stop your eyes from rolling, the final fifteen minutes unravel in the strangest way possible. These small town hicks (Earl's sister and brother-in-law?) have built an underground prison beneath a barn where they've stashed the elderly Tess whom may or may not be able to breathe down there. They ambush the place with a full SWAT team and Cage and his team insist on doing the digging to get her out. But like, what the hell was their plan?? And why Earl?! Just plain lazy and bad, bad writing.
This was a perfectly forgettable movie, ultimately a totally inoffensive mainstream whatever dud (a 5/10 AT BEST)… for about 80 minutes. Then it totally implodes. Really one of the dumbest and most forced endings I can remember. They rescue her and she recovers in the hospital. Cage and Tess share one final bit of banter about getting in a wheelchair to leave the hospital before the credits roll...
Just total contempt for an audience who they're convicted either don't know better or won't care. The worst B-movies ever made have more plausible and engaging endings. You and I and anyone unlucky enough to see or have seen this deserve more. Hell, Earl deserved more! Earl, I say!! Ugh.
THE VERDICT: 2 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 614 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 616 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 614 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 616 ⫸
Guarding Tess is a 1994 American comedy-drama film starring Shirley MacLaine and Nicolas Cage, directed by Hugh Wilson. MacLaine plays a fictional former First Lady protected by an entourage of Secret Service agents led by one she continually exasperates The film is set in Somersville, Ohio (in reality Parkton, Maryland) and was nominated for a Golden Globe award in 1995 (Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical: Shirley MacLaine). It was released on March 11, 1994.
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