Weather Man, The

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This film has moments of uncommon observation and touching insight.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage, a great oddball movie star who sometimes takes enormous risks, has a good, risky part again.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The Weather Man begs to be taken seriously and can't easily be dismissed; it kicks around in your mind for a good long while after you've seen it. Cage, who does his finest work since "Leaving Las Vegas," has stripped himself bare of the patented tics and mannerisms he honed in one Jerry Bruckheimer movie too many.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Written by Steve Conrad, this is the smartest script director Gore Verbinski has ever had, and he makes the most of it, aided by a strong cast.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Winda Benedetti

Cage trots out all of this character's flaws in a form so raw and true you can't help but cringe in your seat as he careens from one self-inflicted interpersonal failure to another.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

It works as an intriguingly offbeat character study while offering Nicolas Cage a chance to show why he used to be considered one of the top actors of his generation.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This is the sort of small, intimate movie that, if it had been made on a low budget by independent actors, would be celebrated to the skies.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Reaction to The Weather Man may depend upon an individual's ability to tolerate spending 100 minutes in the company of an unpleasant protagonist. There's no doubt this can be an uncomfortable experience, but it can also be rewarding for those who are willing to endure the discomfort.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The movie gives actors many chances to shine, and they do. But I went away most impressed with Verbinski.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The film is certainly worth seeing, but it should be better than it is.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Heartfelt and often very funny.

Slate David Edelstein

A fine movie, beautifully acted, but it isn't easy to love--or to watch. It's a parade of miseries, made even more miserable by Gore Verbinski's direction.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Shines the light on a special kind of heroism -- the guts to face up to yourself and make changes. What makes this so emotionally compelling is the way Dave scrambles from this deep vale of cluelessness to something approaching moral maturity.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

A surprisingly wry, contemplative movie.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The Weather Man is not the wacky movie Paramount is selling, nor is it cynical Oscar bait. It's just a little movie about little people trying not to get wet or freeze to death or get burned when they walk outside, and good luck with all that.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The scenes between Cage and Caine are by far the film's most affecting. The two men don't seem to share the same gene pool, which only helps their dynamic.

The New Yorker David Denby

The director, Gore Verbinski, would seem to be an odd man for this material, but he and Steven Conrad hold their ground, sticking to their conviction that Dave's story should play as a belated-coming-of-age movie.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

The most supremely odd American film of the year.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Screenwriter Steve Conrad has less success with the female characters: The always dependable Davis is forced into shrewish territory, and David's mother (Judith McConnell) is so barely present that it's a wonder she's written in at all.

USA Today Mike Clark

This is one glum outing, with occasional pings of wry wit and hearty chuckles.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Neither the screenplay nor the direction has the requisite depth to turn the banality of one unremarkable life into the stuff of Chekhov, much less of Mr. Payne.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage doesn't so much play a protagonist, warts and all, as he plays a protagonist who is all warts.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

What ultimately keeps The Weather Man from being a better film than it is that it doesn't no when to quit.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The movie mostly proves that cutting-edge humiliations are best absorbed in 25-minute segments on HBO.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A sour, deflating and ultimately unlikable black comedy about how awful life can be.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Dave is one of the most ineffectual characters ever to have an entire movie built around him.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Nicolas Cage does such a persuasive job of portraying Chicago TV weatherman Dave Spritz as a train wreck of a guy that you wonder whether this might actually be a training film for a psychoanalytic convention on hopeless cases.

Premiere Peter Debruge

Their movie is cold, and I mean that not as a weather pun, but in the sense that it's impossible to warm up to a character who sees the awful things happening around him strictly in terms of how they affect him.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

There are moments when Cage (with his perpetually worried eyebrows) and Caine (with his inherent emotional elegance) carry the picture admirably enough.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Cage works hard to find traces of humanity in a man that God forgot, as do screenwriter Steven Conrad and director Gore Verbinski. But in the face of a character no one cares about, can audiences be faulted for asking: Why should we?

Variety Justin Chang

Aiming for an Alexander Payne-style synthesis of wry comedy and unflinching character study, pic has been made with the utmost sincerity, but the frankly lugubrious material and barely compensating spasms of humor are all but impossible to warm to.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The Weather Man is what indie misery looks like when re-created by one of Hollywood's big studios.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The Weather Man belongs to a school of earnest, artsy Hollywood flicks that includes the Michael Douglas-goes-bonkers "Falling Down," and a lineage that goes back to revered 1970s pics like "Five Easy Pieces."

Empire Simon Braund

The film's chill seeps into your bones like a ceaseless cold drizzle. It also suffers from uncomfortably weird tonal shifts.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

One of those purposefully glum studies in alienation that Hollywood occasionally produces as blue-state specials for disenchanted liberals.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A guaranteed downer that's devoid of any upside, and free of dangerously entertaining side effects.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Meet American Beastly, perhaps the most bitter studio film of the year.