All the World’s a Cage: The Best of Times. By Rufus Black.

Welcome, once again, to the second instalment of “All the World’s a Cage”, the feature where we methodically review every Nicolas Cage movie ever made, and calculate a Cage score as a metric to assess them. After we saw Nicolas’ first theatrically released film in the previous instalment, we now actually pop back in time a little further, to “The Best of Times”! This television pilot for a teenage pseudo-reality show was never picked up, and thus was instead released as a TV movie. As far as I am aware, this would be his first credit in any capacity. If anyone has any knowledge otherwise, please do leave a comment. I keep encountering its runtime being listed as an hour, though the most complete version of it I could locate on the world wide web clocks in at around 48 mins. Since there’s no obviously missing section, I may just assume that the 60 minutes is the televised time slot complete with full advert breaks.

“But Rufus”, I hear you say, “You said this was monthly feature. Where was last months?” Shut up. Just shut up. Here’s a ‘no-prize’ excuse for you. We’ll say the feature started in September, and the first one was actually a month early. So there. I’m not late, you’re just lucky.

Without further ado, let’s dive into this thorough waste of time.

The Best of Times was directed by Don Mischer, who has an extensive list of prominent directorial and producer credits for televised live events such as the Oscars, the Obama inauguration, Olympic opening ceremonies, and a swathe of musician’s specials. And apparently this pilot, as well.

In short, this variety show is essentially a collection of supposedly funny skits featuring a handful of teenagers playing fictionalised versions of themselves. Since there’s no real plot here, we may as well dive into the characters, which the show hinges on anyhow. Chiefly notable amongst the cast is our intrepid hero and Crispin Glover. Glover is the lead, and introduces and signs off the episode. He’s presented as a relatable everyman, and I suppose he is. However, especially in his interactions with adults, he behaves much the same as George McFly and it’s damn near impossible to not view it as McFly transposed to a world where he isn’t bullied. Like every one else in the program, he knocks out a few jokes that don’t really land, dances that are surprisingly very nicely choreographed and some short sincere monologues supposedly to elicit sympathy for teenagers. For once I’m grateful for the laugh track: without it I’d be clueless as to which bits are supposed to be funny. Glover does an admirable job with lacklustre material. Unfortunately for him, the characters are predominately separable by way of their two-dimensional gimmicks – there’s a girl who can’t stop eating, a Warren Zevon lookalike who’s scorned by women, and a girl who wants to join a band. Crispin is lumped with being the main character who introduces us to these people, and as such has no gimmick himself to lean into. That said, he has a rather spectacular freakout to the Talking Heads, which is amongst the moments that redeem having to sit through the rest of it.

Who is the most watchable throughout? You guessed it. Nic’s role in this, Nicolas, is jock with a one track mind, constantly exercising and chasing women. He’s got the build for it and you can see his mad charisma seeping in. If it was 1981 and we’d never heard of him before, we might rightly assume that the character is exhibiting signs of sociopathy or roid rage. He’s magnetic and intense, obsessed with Rocky’s violence and looking pretty good in dungarees. His ‘sincere monologue’ is longer than everyone else’s, and concerns him being worried about being sent off to war in El Salvador. Seems he didn’t need to be so worried in retrospect, but he gets a lovely 2-3 minute section to himself and really feels like a lost kid scared of being blown to smithereens. Like the genesis of his later strategy to ground a massive and almost cartoon lunatic with an on-the-nose emotional foundation.

We also have Jackie Mason as Mr. O’Reilly, the adult in the show. Here’s a place where the comedy really pays off. You may know him as the voice of Krusty’s father, and that flat delivery is perfect for this job. In contrast to the over enthusiastic kids around him, O’Reilly is tired and confused with it all. It’s easiest to see things from his perspective rather than theirs.

The whole thing jumps from skit to skit, some amusing and others not so much. You can usually tell in the first few seconds. It reminded me of newspaper comics in a way. You have the characters and you read through three panels hoping the fourth makes it worth it, and half the time, it is. The only real story that ties it together is the big school dance at the end. This is spookily reminiscent of Back to the Future, with McFly (sorry, Glover) telling us how his parents met at a dance just like it, before the rock band girl comes out enlivening events with a solo. Their parents weren’t ready for that, but they loved it.

It’s hard to pass any judgement on Mischer’s direction. Most of the scenes are in one or two shots, usually quite wide except for close up monologues. It looks like a sitcom, and I imagine the idea was for one a week they’d be knocking them out quick, so not as much finicky cinematic stuff. It was written by Bob Arnott, Carol Hatfield Sarasohn and Lane Sarasohn. Arnott would do some Sonny & Cher, the Sarasohns some Munsters. I’m not going to be too disparaging on anyone involved as I suspect, given the format and their credit lists, this was one of many jobs they were working on at once with a quick turnaround. It’s not too bad, anyway. I can’t really imagine who the target audience would be. Teenagers would be patronised, and adults would be put off by the constant winging about how hard a teens life is. Since it didn’t kick off, we can suspect that was most people’s takeaway.

A competent waste of time that’s just watchable enough for you to limp through, the promise of the next gag sufficient to tolerate each one.

3/10

Some Notes on Cage

I couldn’t find much about the production of this one, or how he ended up on it. Indeed, the fact that it exists was a bit of trivia in itself. He’s Nicolas Coppola here, same as Ridgemont. This would be his only tv performance for the longest time.

As A Cage Film

How much of the motion picture is he in?

Quite a fair chunk. And indeed, I would say just the right amount. Being the best part of the show, it would be tempting to just stick him on the whole time. But instead, he’s used sparsely enough that it’s exciting each time he crops up without relegating him to the sidelines.

8/10

Could anyone else have played this role?

Nope. The role is literally “Nicolas”. Given how much he sticks out and excels with limp material, it’s pretty clear he was an excellent choice.

4/5

Does he get Uncaged?

Not entirely, but we see it peeking through. His weird expressions when making custom percussion, his intimidating sexual energy with Warren Zevon, his awesome one-handed press-ups. We don’t see him smash up a bathroom in his pants, but there’s enough to suggest it in the future.

3/5

Would it suck without him?

Yes, probably. Jackie Mason and Crispin Glover give it something, and Jill Schoelen and Janet Robin are characterful enough to not be boring. But really, take Cage out of this and there’s no point to watching it to the end.

3/10

Cage Fight – Could Nicolas beat Brad’s Bud in a fight?

Yes. Obviously we have two men of near identical age and build, but Nicolas has that crazy edge here. We see him training to fight. We hear how much he wants to break ribs like Rocky. Where we have to infer about Brad’s Bud, Nicolas is obviously deranged.

3/3

Cage Score

After totalling each category with equal weight, this one comes out as being a fairly decent Cage film. Maybe the metric needs work. Or maybe not. We’re not judging quality here, we’re judging whether this is a good watch if you want something Cage. And if you want something Cage, that means you want unusual, off-beat and showcasing the man’s oddball chops. This is a nice one for that.

72%

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