#26: Trapped In Paradise (1994)

My name is Ed and I intend to win the lottery by any means necessary, by which I mean I am going to watch Nicolas Cage films and pick lottery numbers inspired by those films.

I’ve never had any particular opinions about Dana Carvey. Like more or less everyone else of around my age I have a nostalgic fondness for the Wayne’s World films, and he wasn’t notably bad in that episode of Saturday Night Live I had to sit through the other week because Nicolas Cage was in it. Beyond that I would have struggled to name anything else he’s actually done.

But now? Now I hate Dana Carvey. Because of Trapped In Paradise.

I literally did a deep exhale after typing the title. Bloody hell, this film is no good. It might be the worst Nicolas Cage film so far, although I’m not going to watch The Boy In Blue again to check.

Here’s the premise: one Christmas Eve three bad brothers rob a bank in a good-hearted aw shucks golly gosh little American town called Paradise, then find it hard to escape (i.e. they are trapped). Will the magical Christmas spirit work it’s way into their criminal hearts? Probably.

On paper this looked like it might be alright — writer/director George Gallo is behind the reasonably well-regarded Midnight Run, and while Jon Lovitz has been a lot of terrible crap I thought maybe he and Cage could be a fun pairing.

Unfortunately, the script is the biggest load of ‘will this do?’ shit padded out to nearly 2 hours with the worst kind unfunny, illogical plot twists. Cage’s character makes no sense — he’s supposedly the ‘good’ one, despite having the same criminal urges that have landed his brothers in jail — so is he reverting to his true nature when he becomes a bank robber, or when he has ANOTHER change of heart at the end of the film? The token romantic plotline involving him and Mädchen Amick is ridiculously perfunctory — two tepid conversations and he’s planning to move into town permanently. I mean I suppose she is Mädchen Amick.

Various other things happen: the brothers try desperately to leave town by car, canoe and sleigh, some rival would-be bank robbers kidnap their mum, the FBI show up to try and sort everything out: but it’s a pretty desperate box-ticking exercise in ‘things that should happen in this sort of the film’ — there’s no sense of anything close to joy in any of this, no feeling that anyone involved particularly cares.

The single worst thing in this film is Dana Carvey, and his character, Alvin. Both character and performance are perhaps the most irritating things I’ve ever encountered in any media. When Cage and Lovitz have finally actually robbed the bank, they run out to the getaway car — Alvin is at the wheel. Alvin, because he is an idiot. starts driving away before they’ve got in the car. Eventually he stops, but then just as they catch up with him, he drives away again. And so on, in varying forms, for the rest of the film. Stop being such a dick Alvin. Stop it.

Stupid characters are obviously a comedy mainstay, but there’s no comic affect, or indeed effect, to this character — he is quite literally a witless fool.

Much of the rest of his contribution is related to his single other character trait: he’s a kleptomaniac. So get this: he’s constantly stealing stuff. Imagine! A kleptomaniac who steals stuff! And then pulls a face so we all know he’s a bit simple! The film does this ‘joke’ approximately 100 times. Why? WHY?

I would say that Dana Carvey is the poor man’s French Stewart, but is it even possible to be the poor man’s French Stewart? French Stewart IS the poor man’s French Stewart. Dana Carvey is the French Stewart of the man who is so poor that he has long since died of starvation.

Avoid.

THE NUMBERS

7 — At the beginning of the film Nicolas Cage finds a wallet with 700 dollars in it and is tempted to steal it. He decides against it, because he’s the ‘good’ brother. Until some very light persuasion leads him to turn into a sodding bank robber.

8 — At some point someone says that there are 8 million stories in the naked city (i.e. New York). This is a reference to the film The Naked City, which like 7,999,998 other stories in New York is no doubt better than this.

20 — If the brothers get caught they’ll apparently get 20 years in prison, minimum.

27 — The brothers steal 275,000 dollars from the bank, which doesn’t seem like that many dollars even in 1994 money, at least not enough to be worth the risks involved with robbing a bank.

24 — Most of the film is set on Christmas Eve, which is generally the 24th of December.

45 — Their bank robbery is delayed because the bloke with the key to safe isn’t going to be back for 45 minutes. LOL?

THE RESULT

No numbers. NONE. There’s also a thing this month where for some reason if you put some details about your ticket on their website there’s another draw in which you could win £20,000 and I haven’t even won that. Maybe I should rob a bank.

Actually, ironically enough, this week my debit card got cloned and someone attempted to spend £100 of my money in a Morrisons. I blame Dana Carvey.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

Kiss of Death. If it’s worse than this I am going to have to seriously rethink my plans.