DVDFile

Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment / 2005 / 101 Minutes / R
Street Date: February 21, 2006

“All of the people I could be”, says Chicago forecaster Dave Spitz in Gore Verbinski’s The Weather Man, “got reduced every year to fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to one . . . to who I am.” It’s a depressing, reductive way to explain why you are who you are, but there’s truth to it. And The Weather Man is filled with truth, the messy, unflattering, ground level kind of truth that most films don’t have the humanity, guts, or interest to shoot for. It makes The Weather Man a dour movie and a sad sack movie, but it’s a real movie populated with real people.

In the case of Dave (Nicolas Cage), he’s a Chicago TV weatherman, which means his job is to smile and deliver bad news. And he pays a price for it. He’s often the target of various junk food projectiles, thrown by people who don’t like his predictions, or possibly, don’t like him. Whether it’s a Big Gulp or a box of McNuggets, the items often hit him sloppily and usually around the head or shoulders. Dave’s ex-wife Noreen (Hope Davis, who brings warmth and dimension to every role she plays) is living in his dream home with another man. Dave’s two kids are troubled. Son Mike (Nicholas Hoult) is the unwitting target of a pedophiliac drug counselor (Gil Bellows) and daughter Shelly (Gemmenne de la Pena) is overweight and miserable. But Dave’s real problem is that he can’t live up to his father, Robert (Michael Caine), a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Robert is a stern man who lacks irony and can’t understand why his son makes a living predicting something that, by definition, changes constantly and therefore can’t really be predicted. But Dave is kinda like the weather, floating around, unable to land, mucking up a chance to reconcile with Noreen, failing to satisfy his father, and fumbling for a way to connect with his kids. It makes sense then, at least from a symbolic standpoint, that Dave would take up archery. Because Dave needs to straighten himself out, find the bullseye, and hit it.

What’s refreshing about the movie is that its main character isn’t a loser or a buffoon. He’s just a guy trying to get it right. Most of the time, he fails. Sometimes, like when he lands a lucrative gig in New York, he succeeds. Cage plays the role with a perpetual look of sadness and regret, as if he knows the right thing to do, but is trapped in a self-defeating loop that won’t let it happen. Verbinski is a versatile and talented director able to find the right visual language no matter whether the assignment is Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mexican (a film that counts myself as one of its nine fans), or The Ring. And he never lets studio gloss mask the protagonist’s pain that’s needed for the audience to empathize with Dave. For a studio movie, The Weather Man is pretty downbeat; it’s a mystery why Paramount saw its moneymaking potential. (That’s really a backhanded compliment; there is no reason why quirky character studies have to be the purview of the indie world.)

Dave’s relationship with his father comes to a head when Robert is diagnosed with lymphoma, a death sentence. Robert gives what would be a father’s final piece of advise to his son, “we must chuck some things in this shit life.” Robert may have been referring to himself, because Dave needs to unload the baggage that comes with living up to someone else’s standards, especially a successful father.  In the end, Dave may not get everything he wants and he may not slay every dragon of his past. But instead of looking behind him, he’s learned to look ahead. Because that’s where the target is.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The first scene of the movie had such pixelation I was taken aback. I thought there is no way this transfer is going to be that bad. But the 1.85:1 anamorphic effort straightened itself out and wound up being good, but only good. There’s a decent amount of grain in the interior night scenes, like in the hotel, which go beyond artistic concerns. Detail is really hit and miss. I was able to read every line on the parking ticket Dave received early on, but other scenes showed fuzziness in lettering, etc. Colorwise, this is a very cold, subdued movie. The splotches of color we see, like the green screen and Shelly’s fashionable new dresses, are nicely saturated. Flesh tones are natural, but some of Nicolas Cage’s close-ups have a distinct digitized feel to them. I also saw some mild edge halos. It’s an okay transfer. 

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
 
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track didn’t show much ambition and seemed perfectly happy to stay solidly average. The music, which contains electronic elements, shows nice crispness, even if the score seems relegated mostly to the center. The sides and rears didn’t have much to say, save the occasional sound effect or line of dialogue. There wasn’t much depth to the sound, but there was a little bass foundation, mostly provided by the score. For a dour comedy, the provided sound does the job well enough.

There are also English Surround 2.0 and French 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are in English and Spanish.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

I found these extras to be pretty standard. A Nicholas Cage or Gore Verbinski commentary would have goosed the quality of the release.

The first featurette is Extended Outlook: The Script. Producer Todd Black said that years ago, Weather Man writer Steven Conrad wrote a movie called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, which he bought and produced. Director Gore Verbinski wanted to do something different, especially after Pirates of the Caribbean. From buying the script to shooting the script took about a year, which is “pretty unusual,” according to Black. All the principles, including Cage and Conrad, are interviewed. Conrad talks about how much of the film, including the shake-throwing and the group therapy scenes, was based on his own life.

Next is Forecast: Becoming a Weatherman. Had they taken this more seriously, it would have been really interesting. Everyone wants to know about weathermen, how they gather their information, how much they really know about the weather, etc. This featurette doesn’t give us that. But we do get five minutes of Cage, Conrad, Verbinski, and technical advisor Tom Skilling from WGN in Chicago. Skilling said the production scouted his office to see what a real meteorological office looks like, what their day consists of, and what charts they consult.

The nine-minute featurette Atmospheric Pressure: The Style and Palette is about how the creative team leaders decided on the mostly desaturated visual look of the movie. Verbinski credits DP Phedon Papamichael with always keeping the characters first and foremost in his mind, not the show-off visuals. They also talk about shooting in Chicago, how unique the light is in the Windy City, and why they made Dave’s world desaturated, but his ex-wife’s house warm. The Production Designer talks about how he found all the key locations. For fans of moviemaking, this is the best featurette.

Relative Humidity: The Characters delves into the characters played by Cage, Michael Caine, Hope David, and others. It’s fluffy, but it’s a good Cliff Notes version of the thematic and character considerations in the film. Verbinski does a lot of the talking, discussing what weather represents in the movie and how Dave’s relationship with his father forms the crux of the movie. The featurette is about twenty minutes long and includes a cute bit where we see Verbinski throw McDonald’s apple pies at Cage’s character.

The last featurette is Trade Winds: The Collaboration. This is where everyone else, from the editor to the composer, get their due. Editor Craig Wood talks about working with Verbinski for over ten years, meaning they usually choose the same take and they have a nice verbal shorthand. After DP Papamichael chimes in, we hear from costume designer Penny Rose. Last and most interesting, we meet composer Hans Zimmer. To record the score, the band (including Gore Verbinski on guitar!) set up in Zimmer’s house and wailed away.

Finally, there are some Paramount trailers, including Elizabethtown and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Final Thoughts

Emotionally messy, dour and true, The Weather Man is the most unfairly overlooked major studio film of 2005. The DVD contains a disappointing transfer and the extras are targeted towards the rental crowd. Still, the movie is great and deserves a wider audience on DVD. Recommended.