Revisiting 'Raising Arizona' and a defense of Nicolas Cage

Aww, young Nicolas Cage

It's easy to take potshots at Nicolas Cage.

He is like the poster boy for making regrettable "paycheck movies," especially since his embarrassing financial troubles became common knowledge.

Somewhere around the time he won the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas his once-promising career as a character act made a pivot and he turned into a kind of unconventional action star.

And while he starred in numerous hit films -- many in the Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay mold -- he began to look and sound increasingly like a parody of himself.

Every once in a while there is an outlier like Adaptation or Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, where he gives us some of the true talent he displayed early in his career. Still, his output for the last 20 years has largely been laughable.

That's why it's hard -- especially with younger moviegoers -- to make the case that Cage was once one of the most interesting and entertaining actors of his generation. He's been such a goofball for so long (spawning one of the great recent SNL imitations) that few people, other than diehard fans, take him seriously anymore.

Moonstruck

But when he first burst onto the Hollywood scene -- albeit with an assist from his famous relative Francis Ford Coppola -- he was compelling.

Most mainstream audiences were introduced to his oddball energy in the 1986 time-traveling fantasy Peggy Sue Got Married (directed by Coppola). Cage adopts a cartoonish accent, blonde pompadour and I assume false teeth to play a very unconventional love interest for Kathleen Turner, to say the least. The performance divided critics, but it was undeniably memorable.

The following year Cage delivered an incredible one-two punch, the classic Coen brothers comedy Raising Arizona and the wonderful Cher romantic comedy vehicle Moonstruck. In both films, Cage gives the best kind of controlled eccentric performances -- they don't derail the movies, if anything he enhances them.

In Raising Arizona, he is like a living, breathing cartoon -- from his unkempt hair to his myriad of wacky facial expressions. But what really makes the character he plays, and the movie itself, resonate with me is how inherently sweet they both are. Watching the film this past weekend, I started to tear up during Cage's final monologue, in part because his delivery was so sincere amid the heightened reality of the film.

In Moonstruck he makes for an unlikely romantic lead opposite Cher. They have a real chemistry -- she plays an unappreciated store clerk and he a lonely baker. Cage comes equipped with a fake wooden hand and a lot of overheated dialogue -- but he delivers it so convincingly you never laugh at his performance, you chuckle with it.

In 1990's Wild at Heart director David Lynch gave Cage full reign to indulge his infamous Elvis obsession and he delivered yet another excellent, albeit mannered leading man performance. And I would suggest Cage haters check out another underrated gem -- the 1993 noir thriller Red Rock West, which has him playing more of a straight man drifter opposite a deranged Dennis Hopper.

Unfortunately A-list fame seems to have corrupted Cage and now people aren't even buying tickets anymore. It seems like audiences have tired of his over-the-top antics, even if they proved to be diverting in mainstream junk like National Treasure.

Still, Cage is relatively young -- 51 years old. He's just been around so long people don't realize it. I believe there's still a chance he can deliver a great performance in a worthy film, without sacrificing his trademark eccentricity.