#5: Racing With The Moon (1984)

Hello! My name is Ed and I am trying to win the lottery by watching Nicolas Cage films. Medium recommended the tags “Personal Development” and “Mental Health” for this post and I don’t know what it is trying to say. [2020 note: I originally published these on confusing ‘content platform’ Medium]

So far, trying to win the lottery by watching Nicolas Cage films hasn’t worked — but will a wartime romantic drama starring bad idiot Sean Penn turn things around?

World War 2 is happening, which means some pretend men played by Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage are going to be shipped off to fight in just 6 weeks. Let us hope nothing of note happens to them in that time! (Don’t worry, almost nothing does!)

The 2 basic plot threads here are that Sean Penn fancies Elizabeth McGovern (later the American mum one from Downton Abbey) — and that Nicolas Cage needs to pay for his girlfriend’s abortion. These two threads intersect when Cage asks Penn to borrow money off McGovern who they assume is rich because she lives in a big house except in a twist she is not rich, she is the daughter of a servant because this is not Downton Abbey and she is playing a different character because that is how acting works.

Various events occur in this film. Sean Penn tries to woo the lady by going roller skating even though he can’t roller skate with consequences that fall well within the audience’s expectations. Nicolas Cage tries to get a tattoo but is very drunk and doesn’t have any money so he can’t get a tattoo. The lady takes Sean Penn to see some injured soldiers so we can all learn that war is in fact a bad thing.

Just as the film appears to have reached a limit of tedium, our ‘heroes’ decide to raise the money they need for the abortion by hustling some sailors at pool, so we get to watch people playing pool. For approximately 17 hours until the viewer wishes a violent death on everyone present.

Cage tries to liven things up, but his attempts to give his character some edge (most amusingly in the aforementioned scene where he keeps demanding a tattooist ink the “high-flying, red, white and blue bird of freedom” over his heart) work against the tone of the rest of the film — there’s no pathos to balance the mania, so he just comes across as an aggressively unpleasant idiot.

The film finally ends with our brave boys about to board the train to war, which they deliberately miss so they have to run after it and jump on the back. Because they are bell-ends, and I hope the war goes very badly for them.

Oh yeah, and no-one races with the Moon even once. As far I can work out the title is just a reference to some cack old song that isn’t even in the film. So my advice is don’t watch Racing With The Moon unless you really need to because of a magic spell you’re doing to win the national lottery. For instance:

THE NUMBERS

2 — The number of the lane Nicolas Cage is setting up when we first meet him in a bowling alley. In the olden days they didn’t have a robot or whatever to reset the lanes in bowling alleys, they had to have a Nicolas Cage to do it!

8 — Sean Penn has a dog called August, which is the EIGHTH month.

12 — Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage are shipped off to war on the 12th of February.

25 — The shoes the American mum from Downton Abbey wants but can’t afford cost 25 dollars, which is a lot of money because it is olden days.

42 — The film starts in the year 1942.

45 —The number of the train the takes Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage to war when this film finally fucking ends.

THE RESULT

0 balls matched, on either my main ticket or the bonus Lucky Dip I won for Valley Girl. I sat through all of that nonsense for NOTHING? Screw you, Racing With The Moon. Screw you.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

The Cotton Club, which was the first film to ever use the Macrovision VHS copy protection system. It says here.