Margaux and I discuss a mid-90s curio, Guarding Tess.
Trevor: You suggested this movie, and I admit I thought it was something of an odd choice, given that everything else we’ve watched has been either nuts (Con Air), boring (The Runner), or an indisputable classic (Raising Arizona). I’ve seen Guarding Tess before, in middle school, and remembered almost none of it beyond the initial premise. But I have to say, this was a pretty good pick. From a storytelling perspective, it’s pretty straightforward (people grow to like and learn from each other, basically), but it lives and dies on the considerable chemistry between Nicolas Cage and Shirley Maclaine, and that made it pretty enjoyable.
Margaux: Out of all the Cage movies we bandied about for this feature, I’d never seen or heard of Guarding Tess and was fairly surprised to learn Shirley Maclaine agreed to star in a picture with Cage. Not going to lie, was hoping this movie would have been a bigger mess, but you nailed it when said Guarding Tess straightforward.
First things first, in the realm of names that Nic Cage cannot pull off, Doug is most certainly chief among them.
Trevor: Definitely tied with “Kyle Miller.” You’re so right.
Margaux: This movie must’ve been made during a Driving Miss Daisy craze, but comedy, Guarding Tess is not. It almost seems edited out of order. We start on Doug’s last day as Secret Agent in Charge of Tess Carlisle, former first lady, only for him to end up back there again five minutes later. If we’re supposed to understand how monotonous and unexciting his job is, why didn’t we start with that excellent scene in the grocery store when they’re trying to get a price check on peas?
Trevor: I agree, it’s hard to put monotony on screen without making the film itself monotonous. Sometimes Guarding Tess can walk that line, sometimes it can’t. The grocery store scene was great, and probably the funniest the film gets (before a tonal shift at the end that I’m not sure I’m nuts about). The other best running gag was the president calling Doug repeatedly, which I liked for a number of reasons. One, it’s funny to watch someone get chewed out by their boss when their boss is the president. Two, whoever that actor was had a really great way of saying “goddamnit.”
Margaux: It also had this Dr. Strangelove quality to it that I wanted more of, but the biggest problem with Guarding Tess is that it goes nowhere and has zero problems until the very bizarre end. The main problem is, white guy who gets paid exceptionally well wants to be where the action is (it’s probably worth noting he’s in middle Ohio). Like Ariel in Little Mermaid, but more entitled and with no fun busty sea witches.
When Cage begrudgingly comes back with claims of doing things “by the books” which only fuels Maclaine’s urge to fuck with him and defy authority. If we were supposed to feel the boredom Cage feels in his job, they really accomplish that at times.
Trevor: I agree that it meanders quite a bit. Most of the film feels like a series of vignettes, and we get no real insight into anyone’s personal life. The best part of the film is definitely Cage and Maclaine, but even that’s pretty predictable. They don’t like each other, then they do. We’ve all seen the movie. But they were fun together, and Maclaine did a solid job with what could have been (and at times was) a very shrill character. But through them we got some really nice scenes like the two of them in a dive bar. Guarding Tess is at its strongest when it’s intimate and character-focused.
Margaux: Right down to the trifling-ass son and his real estate scheme, I was glad to see her turn him down because no one needs to see another rich and powerful woman undone by her ungrateful and greedy son. The turn in Maclaine and Cage’s relationship was about as subtle as a piano falling, when she goes in for a CAT scan, I wrote in my notes, “she’s basically gonna leave all her money to Doug.” Cause that’s how predictable it is.
Before the wacky as fuck ending, there is literally one hint of possible danger, and a moment I really liked because it finally showed Cage not yelling at Shirley Maclaine like an angry teen at his mom at Best Buy. When he relents and brings her to the opera (didn’t know there was opera in Ohio) and Cage thinks some kindly woman in the crowd, who is rifling through her purse, has nefarious designs on the former First Lady, but it turns out she only wanted an autograph. I wish they had more moments of tension like that leading up to the end so that it didn’t feel so unearned and confusing. It was finally left like the movie was getting started when Cage sprung into action and then they drained the moment of any significance. I get that she’s probably lived there a long time and most of the town is, for a lack of a better word, used to her, but come on. THIS IS A MOVIE.
Trevor: Very true. I want to go back and change my assessment of the film, which I called “pretty good.” That’s not a very good descriptor. Guarding Tess is boring at times, fun at times, and very messy at times. And since we’ve been dancing around it, let’s just skip to the ending, which was, yeah, unearned. When I realized what was happening I thought it would be a total copout to have Tess return unharmed, but honestly I’d have preferred the copout. The movie really didn’t need a kidnapping plot. Like, at all.
Margaux: Throughout the entirety of the kidnapping, I kept asking myself, “is this really happening?” Because all they’d bothered to set up is that she likes to go on joy rides and ditch her detail, and she hired her own driver who’s loyal, but also a little dim. Even when her driver admits to the kidnapping scheme, it STILL seemed unthreatening, something about the way he says, “she’s being well taken care of.” It’s probably because the scene before Cage shoots off the driver’s toe, in front of an FBI agent, to obtain information, they learn Tess has a brain tumor. So, part of me thought, “oh, she just went away somewhere to die in peace, like animals do.” It wasn’t until they showed you the drivers SISTER (DID WE EVEN MEET THIS BITCH?! WHERE DID SHE COME FROM, WHAT IS SHE GAINING??) buried her ALIVE that you’re like, WHAT?? Is this the same movie I have been watching? Did they mix up the film and edit in some other ending to a different movie?
Trevor: Cosign on everything you just said, but I just realized how off-track we’ve gotten. Which is fine, this is our feature and we can do whatever we want. But before we wrap up let’s talk about Cage. I like him as a straight man, and this is arguably the straightest man we’ve seen him play yet. His performance here isn’t likely to be on any retrospectives when he passes away 100 years from now, but it works fine for the material. And he’s good with Maclaine. That’s about all I can say about it.
Margaux: There’s a scene where Cage and Maclaine argue about whether or not to fire her driver Earl (clearly, should’ve) and Cage starts to shout in his Cage-y way and for a second, Maclaine matches his energy and it doesn’t work at all. Cage is great in family-friendly comedies like Sorcerers Apprentice because it encourages the kooky and strange, Doug does not ask that of Cage at all.
Next up: Army of One
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