If the movie Next were a contestant on the show Next, Margaux and I would say “Next!” Here, we discuss Next.
Trevor: I feel like “uninteresting composers” is a running theme in 12 Days of Cage-mas. First we had Trevor Rabin’s almost confrontationally forgettable score to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, now we have whatever the hell Mark Isham is doing in Next. This might seem like a weird thing to notice, but we’re pretty far down the rabbit hole here, and we still have eight movies to go.
I thought Next was pleasingly nuts at times, although for the most part it didn’t live up to the premise. By which I mean, when I hear Nicolas Cage is playing a magician, I don’t want him sleepwalking up there on stage, I want full-force Nicolas Cage Las Vegas madness. (And while we’re on the topic of music, can we stop using “A Little Less Conversation” in Las Vegas movies post-Ocean’s 11?)
Margaux: You bring up three excellent points. 1.) Next’s greatest trick is that it isn’t about magic at all. It’s kind of about love, with a dash of French terrorists (confusing) and mild fortune-teller-can-see-the-future business, which isn’t magic. 2.) This movie starts in Vegas and ends in LA (I think?), and spends a significant amount of time at the edge of various cliffs. Aren’t they in the Grand Canyon at one point? There is zero sense of geography in this movie. 3.) Cage trope number 7: If he’s in Vegas, Elvis will be playing. And lastly, this movie asks the question: is Jessica Biel a bad actress or is this just a bad movie?
Trevor: Yes, you could say Cage spends as much time as possible…leaving Las Vegas. (Nailed it.) Which is a shame, because for such a crazy premise, Vegas would be a good setting, as opposed to LA, which just looks incredibly bland here. Director Lee Tamahori was clearly more interested in shooting Sin City than the City of Angels.
As to your Biel question, I’ve never seen her in anything that convinced me she was a good actress. (Even The Illusionist, probably the best movie she’s ever been in, is good despite of her and not because of her.) Although I’ll give Next credit for dressing her down; that jean jacket and semi-crimped hair did a lot of work in making her seem like someone who lives in Las Vegas (the most depressing residential area in the world) as opposed to someone who would marry Justin Timberlake.
Margaux: I could talk about her crimped hair and pointy kitten heels all day, it was like her entire wardrobe was purchased from a Contempo Casual fire sale. Next looked incredibly dated for 2007, from Biel’s outfits to the convoluted espionage plot, this movie doesn’t hold up well. And this is the first time I’ve seen it.
Trevor: The plot somehow managed to be convoluted and also boilerplate. This is the kind of movie you’ve seen a thousand times, but I’ll be damned if I could give you the plot breakdown. The nuclear bomb – let me repeat that, THE NUCLEAR BOMB – was treated mostly as a Maguffin, and it never really felt like a threat. NUCLEAR BOMB. Even Julianne Moore, seriously slumming here, couldn’t give it the weight it deserved.
Margaux: Also, the terrorists were French, so…
Trevor: But we started this feature so we could talk about Nicolas Cage. So how was he? On the Cage-o-meter, he’s more interested here than he was in The Runner, but he had a lot more fun in both Snake Eyes and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He got some good scenes in, but he was seriously hampered by a script that didn’t know how to utilize its best gimmick.
Margaux: I gained a whole new level of respect for Next when I realized this was the movie that gave us the infamous eagle-as-Cage’s-hair meme. But even that wore off quickly because Cage spent a majority of his screen time pining for or in love with Jessica Biel, and their chemistry wasn’t compelling enough to keep you engaged. I felt mostly queasy every time they kissed, and their relationship felt unearned. Right from the strange meet-cute via an abusive ex-boyfriend in a diner, the whole thing made less and less sense.
Trevor: If anyone ever says that acting is hard work, tell them you can look like Nicolas Cage and get to make out with Jessica Biel and Monica Bellucci.
I agree with you about their chemistry (or lack thereof), and it all culminated in that laughable scene at the Indian reservation, which itself smacked uncomfortably of the white-savior trope, as Next unwisely decided to show us Biel surrounded by a gaggle of starry-eyed Native kids. But my favorite part was when one of them said that Cage had a crush on her based on the way he looked at her, so she turns her head and sees…Cage giving her the creepiest fucking look anyone has ever given anyone on screen. He’d fare better with the diner waitress in Adaptation than he would with Biel in real life with that look.
Margaux: My note was, “to have Cage stare you down romantically is a nightmare.” Weirder still is that Biel brought Cage, A STRANGER, with her to her job (which looks to be IN the Grand Canyon) en route to taking him to the dentist because her ex knocked his tooth loose in the previous scene.
Trevor: She talks nonstop about how she’ll kick him out if he’s creepy, but has no qualms taking his man she hardly knows to the middle of nowhere and introducing him to a bunch of kids. Also, can we do away with the “strangers on a road trip” plot? We’ve seen it in Nothing But Trouble, Due Date, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, plus an episode of How I Met Your Mother. I know TV and film are disconnected from reality, but this is not something that has ever happened. (Granted: I know Craigslist ride-sharing is a thing, but in everything I just listed, including Next, it all happens organically. Also, I know that this happens in Inside Llewyn Davis, my favorite Coen brothers film, but Llewyn was hitchhiking in that scene so I don’t count it.)
Margaux: So by the time we’re supposed to believe Cage and Biel are in love, it would seem the movie is just going through the motions of tying up every silly plot it half set up. Which makes the “ending” even more annoying! They downplay Cage’s ability to see into the future until it’s convenient that he’s been able to see past two minutes ahead…the whole time. And maybe it’s because he banged Jessica Biel?
Trevor: I think what the film is trying to tell us is that being around Biel lets Cage see further into the future, but they do a really bad job of explicating that. The ending pissed me off to no end; it was tantamount to it all being a dream, and as someone whose name I forgot once wrote, the only time you want to hear “it was all a dream” is at the beginning of “Juicy.”
Honestly, I would have liked this movie a lot more if the nuke had gone off, then credits. Instead it slowly unfurled its middle finger for forty-five minutes, and we didn’t realize until it was too late.
Margaux: Accurate. The end ruined any goodwill Next might’ve accumulated and nuked it while playing Edith Piaf. And I’ll never forgive this movie for sticking the image of Nic Cage “reacting” to the future, as it happens; it looks like his lost audition tape for The Matrix.
Trevor: Overall, too boring, shitty ending, no chemistry between Cage and Biel, and not enough magic. On the plus side, Frank Cadillac is 100% the name Cage uses to check into brothels in Prague.
Margaux: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Next needed more Frank Cadillac magic tricks and Cage telling young women in the audience to, reach in his pocket. That’s the Cage wheelhouse.
Next up: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
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