Feeling great? Everything in your life going right? New relationship, new home, a recent promotion? Sunny skies, warm days, cool nights, little rain? No snow? I guarantee that, no matter how great your life is, this movie will throw you into a pit of depression faster than chanting "Katrina" to a resident of New Orleans.

Nicolas Cage plays sad sack David Spritz, a TV weatherman in Chicago. He is separated from his wife. His overweight daughter is teased and tormented by her classmates, and his attractive 15-year-old son has become the target of a pedophile counselor. Spritz lives in denial that he will get a job with Good Morning, America that will make everything all right. He pitifully tries to reconcile with his estranged spouse. But that Spritz is a loser becomes painfully evident early in the film. Nor will there be any redemption or catharsis, because Spritz is a loser of his own making.

The viewer is thus doomed to watch an additional hour of this dreary movie, knowing that no good will come of it. We aren’t told how he got that way, we aren’t offered any hope that things will change. Spritz just is, and we have to endure him, along with abhorrent and sensationalist sexual subplots and frequent bad language. Not even Michael Caine, looking tired and lost for the first time in his career, can save this film from plunging into the abyss. One of the saddest moments finds Cage and Caine in deep discussion while in an automobile. Two Oscar winners in a forced intimate situation -- there should have been sparks to spare, but the characters are all wet. There is not a single spark.

To ensure that we are completely depressed, the movie is shot in gray and blue tones, and Hans Zimmer’s awful music is simply there to fill up space. This film has no redeeming qualities. Save your money and wait for another weather front to move in.

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