Full disclosure: I am the person that requests that the local library buys every new Nicolas Cage feature and adds it to their catalog. I watch Face/Off every time it’s on cable. I quote Matchstick Men to no one in particular. Renfield was added to my Letterboxd watchlist as soon as outlets announced Nicolas Cage would star as Dracula. So the target audience for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is me, and I loved it. More importantly, you will too.

Tom Gormican’s film follows a lightly fictionalized version of Nicolas Cage, referred to as Nick Cage, down on his luck and in desperate need of some scratch. His agent, Richard Fink (Neil Patrick Harris), who knows that parts are hard to come by, delicately suggests that Nick take an offering to appear at a party for a nominal fee. Nick is hesitant until he hears that the client is a superfan willing to pay $1,000,000. Upon arrival, Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) is everything you’d want in a fan. He appreciates all of Cage’s work and even has a wax statue of Cage on display in his home. The two become fast friends, trading quotes, playing with replica guns from Face/Off, and sharing a bonding experience over some drugs.

Most conventional buddy-comedy/action-ers pair bickering cops and fugitives; The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent gifts us the duo of an A-list actor and a cartel leader. In recreating several of his most memorable scenes from his career, Cage feels valued by Javi in a way that his family can’t provide. His estranged wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan) and daughter Addy (Lily Mo Sheen) aren’t in the picture.

Javi serves as a meta-commentary on fandom, able to recall any quote or scene Cage has performed but indifferent to the artist’s need to exist outside of the internet. Of course, Javi has a screenplay that he wants to produce. The superfan enjoys all the fun and games of palling around with a movie star, but there are skeletons in his closet, er, fortress. It turns out Javi is the head of a crime family and in his dungeon is a kidnapped girl that CIA agents Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) and Martin (Ike Barinholtz) want Cage to spring free. Feeling guilty about his relationship with his daughter, Cage accepts the mission. Well past the expiration point of his blockbuster career, Cage is deep inside a real-life action film.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a fascinating convergence for fans of all ages. Those who have watched Nicolas Cage since the ’80s are fast with quotes from Face/Off, Con-Air, or Moonstruck. Younger viewers who grew up with the insanity of The Wicker Man and the ubiquity of his face in memes only expect him to mug, but that’s not why people enjoy his screen presence. Sometimes that’s the case (I love watching the alphabet clip from Vampire’s Kiss randomly), but it’s never solely for that. This film’s original intention was to lovingly poke at the reputation that Nicolas Cage built in the last decade. But then a funny thing happened. Pig, Michael Sarnoski’s lovely indie about isolation and grief, reminded audiences that Cage is a damn fine actor.

While Nicolas Cage has taken every available role in the last decade, he has never phoned in a performance. Even when it would have been easy to get the shot and move on, Cage brought vitality to projects that, without his name, would never see the light of day. But he doesn’t have to go big every time out to be memorable. In Pig, the scene that lingered long after the credits was Cage at his quietest. When he assured a former peer to go back to his roots because “we don’t get a lot of things to care about.”

Those familiar with Adaptation will enjoy Cage acting against himself. Cage’s younger, more egotistical self calls himself Nicky, appearing to the actor as Cage’s past roles in The Rock and Gone in 60 Seconds. Nicky galavants around, screaming his name and wondering why the current Cage got old and boring. Nicky is a hallucination no one else is privy to but Cage, yet he delivers a moment guaranteed to go viral. Just because Nicolas Cage offers both quiet excellence and showy bravura doesn’t mean he will leave you hanging in the GIF department.

Fortunately for moviegoers, director/co-writer Tom Gormican and fellow writer Kevin Etten know that riffing on Nicolas Cage’s career can’t sustain an entire feature. So the duo invests in the story surrounding the meta-comedy of the film, giving Cage a chance to shine, but his co-stars as well. Sharon Horgan is a delightful surprise as Cage’s ex-wife, and Pedro Pascal, playing against type as Javi, gets to flash the comedic side that The Mandalorian and Narcos rarely indulged.

If you haven’t seen most of Nicolas Cage’s output during the last ten years, still feel free to give this film a shot. Anything you don’t know about the first time will be much funnier the second time you watch (and yes, you will want to see this again).

Don’t call it a comeback because Nicolas Cage didn’t go anywhere.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent hits theatres April 22.