'The Weather Man': Mostly funny with occasional pain

"The Weather Man" is about as hard to pin down as a Windy City winter forecast: blizzard in the morning, thawing sunshine in the afternoon.

Alternately funny and painful, the movie is best pegged as dark comedy, and that's a tricky genre to negotiate. But director Gore Verbinski ("The Ring," "Pirates of the Caribbean") steers it with finesse, ferreting humor from dreadfully difficult situations: cancer, death, divorce and attempted child molestation.

Paramount Pictures 'The Weather Man' A- The verdict: A dark comedy with wry wit and deadpan performances by Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine. Director: Gore Verbinski Starring: Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Hope Davis, Gemmenne de la Pena, Nicholas Hoult Run time: 102 minutes Release date: Oct. 28, 2005 Rating: R for strong language and sexual content. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'The Weather Man'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

You elicit laughs from material like that only with the wriest, driest wit and expert, deadpan delivery. For that, "The Weather Man" employs a pair of pros — well, one professional and one outright master.

The latter is Michael Caine, who commands the screen with understated authority in the role of Robert Spritzel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and dying father of the title character. Caine performs with the skill you expect from a two-time Oscar winner who's made more than a hundred movies in the past half century, many of them sporting the same sardonic style. Collaborating with him lifts the star, Nicolas Cage, to a level that exceeds his early success in the similarly wry "Raising Arizona."

Cage plays Chicago weatherman David Spritz — the surname shortened for TV — whose on-screen life is all sunshine: He's pulling down big bucks for little effort at his local station when he gets an invitation to audition for a national network show based in New York. His career appears headed for the big time.

Off-screen, of course, it's raining cats and dogs. His divorce was nasty. His fat klutz of a 12-year-old daughter has started smoking. His 15-year-old son is seeing a drug counselor with an unhealthy interest in teenage boys.

And then Dad's doctor diagnoses the cancer.

OK, it's an exceptionally dark comedy.

David wants his wife back. He wants to build his daughter's self-esteem and guide his son safely to adulthood. Most of all, he wants to gain the respect of his accomplished father before he dies.

What he gets, more often than not, is pelted with fast food: Viewers recognize Spritz on the street and use him for target practice with soft drinks, milk shakes and hot apple pies.

The slapstick shtick mixes well with the offbeat irony that Cage and Caine exude so well. You're likely to laugh out loud — moments before the movie slugs you in the gut again.

"The Weather Man" is not for the timid. It earns its R rating with strong and quite descriptive language. (Don't bring the kids.) The story is sometimes as grim as the Chicago skies, and pathos isn't in the plot.

But Cage, Caine and Hope Davis, who puts in a noteworthy performance as the ex-wife, make "The Weather Man" memorable and entertaining, even if the movie may sometimes be described as Spritz does the weather: "It's just wind. It blows all over the place."