“I should always trust my shamanic instincts as a thespian.”

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a breezy meta-comedy from writer-director Tom Gormican that bets the house on the larger-than-life persona of Nicolas Cage, who appears as “Nick Cage,” a self-deprecating, exaggerated version of himself, as well as “Nicky,” a digitally de-aged Wild at Heart–era figment of the other’s imagination. The premise finds the actor on the brink of irrelevance, addicted to his craft, with an ex-wife (Sharon Hogan) and daughter (Lily Mo Sheen) alienated by his cinephilia, reluctantly accepting a million dollar gig to hang out with a superfan (Pedro Pascal) who also happens to be the figurehead of a family-run crime syndicate that may or may not have kidnapped the daughter of a politician. What ensues is part self-aware meditation on the Cage’s cult of personality, part cineliterate brom-com, part spy movie spoof, with Pascal matching Cage’s shifty, gonzo energy at every turn, modulating between sincerity and insanity as the pair write a film-within-a-film that begins to break into the one we’re watching à la Adaptation. It’s fun, but also ouroboric, pointlessly vulgar, and thematically jumbled. It never transcends its winking concept, and thus its value lies primarily in underscoring that Cage is a dynamic actor who deserves better than playing caricatures of himself.