 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 637: 01.19.23 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 33. Now this is the type of early 90s comedy I remember! One that isn't afraid to be stupid in service of laffz but still manages to have characters that are interesting and we care about. James Caan gets top billing in the credits and rightfully so. This was especially poignant since we lost him this year (RIP). He's such a damn good actor. Sure, his whole thing is like at least 85% schtick but it's a pretty great schtick. And Cage seems inspired working with a great like this, even if they don't share too many scenes together. The misery of Guarding Tess, a comedy that is almost never funny, is finally way behind us now. This one ain't perfect but it's extremely enjoyable. |
Four years later, and we see Cage is working as an NYC private investigator. He's dating Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker), his down-to-earth school teacher girlfriend who's eager to start a family. But he keeps having dreams about his dead mother...
He hangs out with his friend/bookie/dentist and he's wearing a very cool sweater vest...
This establishes that Cage, on top of having a mountain of commitment issues, is a bit of a gambler.
As Cage drags his feet with Betsy, she begins to get disillusioned with the relationship. She wants to get married and have kids and she gives him an ultimatum. So Cage relents and, on a whim, suggests they go to Vegas to tie the knot.
Las Vegas is hopping with an Elvis convention in town and we get the first of a soundtrack's worth of Presley covers (the OST is actually pretty impressive). Then we're introduced to James Caan's character, a shady professional gambler, quasi-mafioso type who gets into it with one of the hotel managers because the suite he always stays in is occupied...
That's Tony Shalhoub in an all-too-brief role. This movie has a bunch of notable That Guys sprinkled throughout.
Next, sort of randomly, we learn about Caan's wife Donna, who got skin cancer at a young age from staying out in the sun too long and died...
As it turns, Betsy is the spitting image of Donna and Caan spots her in the lobby...
Cage is great in this. Doing this thing alphabetically, I feel like I haven't been exposed to younger Cage's work nearly as much as older Cage, which makes sense since he started making (mostly bad) movies at a breakneck pace in the 2010s. But damn, 80s/early 90s Cage is the best.
Betsy wants to get married immediately but he's putting it off. Cage gets an invite to a poker game for "new guests" which is just a set-up by Caan. She's highly suspicious about this but he goes to the game anyway. Betsy goes to lay out by the pool.
At the private poker game, things start off normal enough. Cage makes a bad joke and everybody laughs...
That's the great Wes Anderson favorite, Seymour Cassel at the game, among others. It's not clear if everyone at the table is in on the grift but it doesn't matter. Cage wins a big hand and Caan's reaction is priceless...
This is all part of the con, as Caan (no pun intended) is just waiting for the right time to get Cage in his debt. As the game goes on, Cage borrows money to the tune of 65K and, you guessed it, he loses...
After that, Caan lays out his (indecent) proposal: he'll wipe away the debt if he can spend the weekend with his girlfriend...
The similarities to Indecent Proposal (1993) are striking, obviously. But I did a little digging and it seems to be a simple case of parallel thinking? Even though that movie came out a year later, it's based on a 1988 novel, so if anything it's this movie that's doing the aping. But who really cares in the end.
Cage really stepped in it, and so he goes to the pool to confront Betsy. And then they end up having a serious conversation about it at a boxing match (?) ...
So, just like that, because it's the whole movie's plot after all, she agrees to it. She meets Caan at a dinner show and he starts talking about his dead wife before dropping the next bombshell...
(FUN FACT: That's a tiny Bruno Mars (!!!) playing the young Elvis impersonator lol.)
For whatever reason (again, don't worry about the realism here; we are fully into the movie logic of 1992 romcom Honeymoon in Vegas at this point), she agrees to go to Hawaii with him. Well, Cage — naturally — freaks the fuck about it...
I don't really think of Sarah Jessica Parker in roles like this, but she's great. All of the performances are. They take all this absurdity at face value and just run with it.
So Cage goes back to NYC for work, but he's naturally distracted...
That's Robert Costanzo playing Cage's client. So many great little performances in this.
Back in Hawaii, Caan is doing his schtick...
The best.
They go to see the volcano eruption and wouldn't you know it, Cage sees them on the news back in New York. That's the last straw. He's going to Hawaii to get her back. But first he has to get past Ben Stein...
Cameo central, am I right? This is just the first in an endless parade of follies and obstacles for our hero Cage. Back on the island, Caan starts laying it on thick.... and it seems to be working? ...
When Caan gets word that Cage has arrived in Hawaii, he tasks cab driver Pat Morita (Mr. Miyagi) with keeping him away from the house. Morita's character is named Mahi Mahi, the first of a couple quasi-racist moments in this dated production...
Mahi takes him to a dilapidated shack where we meet Chief Orman (not "Tommy Corman" aka Caan), get it? And here we meet Peter Boyle doing what can only be described as "Hawaii Face" and sharing his "parakeet brandy" — OK, this is a little more than quasi-racist...
I mean it's all too absurd and weird to get mad at. Let's not cancel 1992's Honeymoon in Vegas, alright everybody?
A pissed off Cage then steals Mahi's cab car. He's really going for it. Meanwhile, the shady Caan starts to ramp up the lies in order to win over Betsy and turn on Cage. He tells her that the amount he owes is only $3,000 not $65K and that putting her up for the weekend as payment was actually Cage's idea.
Cage finally tracks them down and they get into a tussle which leads to him getting arrested...
Caan knows he doesn't have much time now so he convinces Betsy to marry HIM (!) and they decide to fly back to Vegas...
You could make the case that this is actually an extremely misogynistic movie. They reduce Sarah Jessica Parker to little more than a heifer essentially. I don't think it's that big of a deal — dated things are gonna feel, well, dated; that doesn't mead they're "bad," I don't feel — but it's worth mentioning.
Back at the slammer, Mahi Mahi ends up helping Cage out because real recognize real...
I LOL'd there.
Caan and Betsy arrive back at the casino and Tony Shalhoub, in just his second and last brief appearance, is so subtly good...
It's a nothing role, but you still get so much nuance out of the character in just a few seconds. A+ acting.
Next, Cage, unable to secure a direct flight to Vegas, gets on the flying Elvis' sky dive team plane. I mean the outrageousness of walking onto the tarmac with a cardboard sign is secondary to the stunt he's about to pull, but it's still incredibly off the wall and unbelievable...
This is the most iconic part of the whole movie coming up and one of Cage's entire career, so all is forgiven as far as the ridiculousness is concerned in my book.
Meanwhile, Betsy is having serious second thoughts. Caan offers her a million dollars to go through with the nuptials, and now she sees his true side. And then he gets physical with her...
Well, that jig is up.
Back on the plane, Cage is getting an impromptu sky-diving lesson and the head Elvis (Burton Gilliam) is awesome. "Ain't nothing full-proof!" ...
While Cage is learning how to jump out of a plane without dying, Betsy is escaping the throngs of Caan by slipping into a showgirls outfit and avoiding his dumb henchman. And then we get the famous Flying Elvis' scene and it's terrific...
Somehow the announcer knows his name even though he was a stowaway. Sure. Why not. This convienantly lets Betsy know he's about to land on the strip. "Can't Help Falling in Love" plays as Cage and Betsy are reunited and it's all pretty perfect honestly...
Just a lovely dumb movie. But, of course, this being 1902 — I mean, 1992, Sarah Jessica Parker's character is made to look meager till the bitter end, blaming herself for the whole ordeal ("I was so dumb," she tells him). We get one more naked mom joke before they finally get hitched, with the Flying Elvis' in attendance...
And that's that for the "H" section! Cage has only been in one movie beginning with the letter "H" and this was that movie. Thanks for visiting my website.
THE VERDICT: 8 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 636 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 638 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 636 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 638 ⫸
Honeymoon in Vegas is a 1992 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Andrew Bergman and starring James Caan, Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker. It was released on August 28, 1992.
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