Nicolas Cage Movie Review: City of Angels (1998)

by Ryan

This movie opens on a young girl who has just died during an intense surgical operation. Her ghost appears next to her body and looks up to see Nicolas Cage, in a long black coat staring back at her. "Are you God?" the little girl asks. "No," says Nicolas Cage. "I'm Seth." "City of Angels" was recommended to me by my girlfriend who knows how much I idolize Nicolas Cage, which also happens to be the only reason I would ever even think about watching a movie like this. Well, let me be the first to say that this movie is fucking garbage. The fact that I was able to sit through it in its entirety is a testament to my love and devotion for Nicolas Cage, but I digress. In "City of Angels," Cage plays an angel named Seth Plate, who is essentially in charge of escorting freshly deceased souls to Heaven. Then one day he meets Meg Ryan and falls in love with her, turning his whole world upside down. Meg Ryan, a peppy young doctor with a heart of gold, also happens to be the only human on the planet that can see Nicolas Cage for some reason. Anyway, they start talking and eventually she finds out that he's an angel and she freaks out and Nicolas Cage is all sad and what not. Then he decides that he loves Meg Ryan so much that he's willing to give up being an angel for her. But in order for an angel to become human, they need to jump off of this one really tall scaffolding located at the center of this construction site. What comes next is probably the best part of the movie: Nicolas Cage stumbling around in his newfound human body, screaming with excitement and showing everyone his bloodied hands. After that, everything else is really boring and sentimental. The story is extremely simple and predictable, the soundtrack is atrocious, and the dialogue is incredibly unrealistic. At one point Nicolas Cage asks Meg Ryan to describe what a pear tastes like, to which she replies "It's like a sugary sand that dissolves in your mouth." Um... Meg Ryan, have you ever actually eaten a pear before?

Rating: 2 out of 5 pear metaphors