I graduated from high school in 1992, the same year that Honeymoon in Vegas came out in theaters. It was the only Nicolas Cage movie released that year (following the sole release of of Zandalee in all of 1991.) These were especially “slim times” for the prolific output of Cage, as he tends to make 3-5 movies a year on average. As was discussed in the last post, Zandalee was a bit of a boring slog, but Honeymoon in Vegas was a much more watchable (if somewhat absurd) romantic comedy that showcased Cage’s range and ability to carry a more mainstream Hollywood hit.

If I had to retitle this movie, I’d call it Gambling Your Wife Away as that was the premise of this Indecent Proposal (1993) pre-cursor that poses and answers the question, “If the circumstances were dire, would you rent-out your spouse to a stranger for a night/weekend?”

Oh sure, it sounds like prostitution when you put it that way (because it is), but unlike Indecent Proposal, Honeymoon in Vegas attempts to skirt the PG-13 moral / ethical line without venturing too close to it. Sometimes it succeeds at this, and sometimes it awkwardly fails. Let’s dive in.

The skinny

To start, private detective Jack Singer (played by Cage) grants his mother’s death-bed wish that he will never get married, even though he’s in love and in a serious relationship with Betsy Nolan (Sarah Jessica Parker) a second-grade teacher who wants to settle down and start a family. Because of his rash promise to his mother, and his career experiences following cheaters and unfaithful spouses, Jack feels conflicted about marriage to begin with. He wants to marry Betsy, so he won’t lose her and especially since she is the “one” for him, but he also fears commitment and the risk of heartbreak. With the strain in the relationship compounding to a near breaking point, Jack relents and proposes to Betsy that they fly to Vegas and tie the knot.

In Las Vegas, the happy couple catches the eye of a professional gambler and gangster, Tommy Kormon (played by James Caan) as they stroll through the Bally’s Casino lobby. Tommy is immediately stricken by Betsy’s beauty and strong resemblance to his late wife, and so he hatches a plot to bring Betsy closer to his sphere. Tommy invites Jack to a new member’s poker game in his penthouse suite with the lure of $1000 credit and the opportunity to win more. Jack, who is still procrastinating tying the knot, convinces Betsy to let him play in the game despite her reservations; he says he’ll win some money, and then they’ll find a place to get married later in the day. Jack, of course, is being conned by the professional gambler Tommy and his friends, and ends up going into debt to Johnny for more than $60,000. Tommy has the ready solution to Jack’s dilemma and offers to wipe out the debt Jack owes (since Jack doesn’t have the funds to pay) by spending the weekend with Betsy as “companions” and all “above board” where he’ll be a “true gentlemen” since he is a grieving widower and misses his wife.

After much deliberation, despair and heated argument, Betsy agrees to the arrangement maybe more out of frustration with Jack and his unwillingness to marry her, than out of a desire to protect Jack or please the aging gangster, Tommy. Through some smooth talking and manipulation by Tommy, the Vegas weekend morphs into a Hawaiian trip with Betsy to one of Tommy’s luxury homes, and the rest of the movie is spent following Jack’s desperate attempts to locate and reclaim his bride-to-be before it’s too late. The movie bounces locations from New York to Vegas, to Kauai, and back again like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and we see a man who fears commitment at the start of the film, become increasingly committed, dogged, and obsessed in his cross-country pursuit to reclaim that which he has lost–his true love.

By the end of the movie, the true nature of Tommy is exposed (as a manipulative, violent tyrant) Betsy’s willingness to wait for the right timing and person is solidified (as she spurns Tommy’s pressure to marry him and seeks out a reunion with Jack) and Jack’s determination to commit to Betsy is crystallized as he goes to untold lengths (he jumps out of a plane!) to win Betsy back.

The movie follows the typical rom-com Hollywood pattern in many ways making it oddly un-Cage like, but this in itself makes it interesting because Cage is taking part in such stereotypical shenanigans. Which leads us to…

The World According to Cage: Vegas Rules

Rule #1: Don’t go to Vegas to get married. Just don’t do it. If Jack is correct and marriage is a “disaster waiting to happen” and that people, “get married and then do the most hideous, horrible things to each other,” then Las Vegas is the perfect place to inflict this kind of suffering and pain on a loved one. He falls right into his own trap here.

Rule #2: Never overestimate your poker playing abilities in Vegas. Jack should have at least read Maria Konnikova’s book The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned How to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. He exhibited none of the three key behaviors here. From his fake mustaches on the job, to his sweaty inability to pull of the poker face, to not knowing “when to [ever] fold ’em” Jack makes for a REALLY easy mark throughout the movie. When another gambler at Tommy’s table suggests that Jack’s “got nothing” in his hand, Jack responds with a tepid, “That’s your constitutional right.” But then he goes on to lose $60,000 and appears to be gut-punched when his straight flush to the Jack gets trumped by Tommy’s “Qu…quuh…QUEEN!”

Rule #3: Remember the old adage about what happens in Vegas…staying there (silently) Jack should have probably bitten his tongue a few times especially when sharing his doings with his fiancé. We know he has mommy issues (which he shares with Betsy) that include some dreams of her being naked. We also know that he’s not good at poker.

“I had a straight flush! Do you know what a straight flush it is? It’s like UNBEATABLE?” [JACK]

“LIKE unbeatable IS NOT unbeatable!” [BETSY]

“I KNOW THAT NOW!” [JACK]

Some things are better left unsaid. Like maybe don’t tell Betsy about Tommy’s proposed solution to clear the debt if you aren’t really willing to let that happen. Just a thought. When Betsy finally finds out how Jack wants to settle his bet, she screams at him, “You brought me to Las Vegas and you turned me into a WHORE, Jack!” Eek, she’s not wrong.

Rule #4: If you go to Vegas, make sure it’s Elvis impersonator weekend. This is one thing Jack got right (probably accidentally) in HiV. While in Vegas, we see a sea of Elvises wandering the lobby and casino of Bally’s. Fat Elvis, old Elvis, Asian and black Elvis, and even tiny tot Elvis (played by a young Bruno Mars!) roll through and perform all the hits with their long capes, upturned upper lips, and confident swaggers. Jack even comments that, “I haven’t seen so many sideburns since West Side Story.” Not to mention the Flying Elvises (we’ll get to it.)

Rule #5: You can and should judge a book by its cover. This is more of a life rule, but especially true in Vegas. If you’re offered a can’t-miss poker game with a guy named Tommy Korman and he looks like James Caan, you should probably pass. If you do show up and Jerry Tarkanian (of UNLV cheating infamy) is at the table chewing on a napkin, you know you’ve made a mistake: Abort! If a guy named Mahi Mahi (played by Pat Morita) shows up in a taxi unsolicited and offers to drive you around Kauai, call an Uber instead. If you are getting your financial advice from a dentist bookie named Sally Molars, you’ve made some bad life choices and you really need to re-evaluate how you’re doing things.

Rule #6: When the house hands you lemons, cut ’em open and squeeze that juicy pulp right in their eye. Or, in other words, just throw a Nic Cage tantrum with a heavy dose of sarcasm and screamed expletives. I’ve give you a sampling of the great lines in HiV and will use the “sarcastic” case font below:

• “WhAT? i’Ll Be ArResTEd? PuT iN AiRPorT JAIL? Just get your ticket and move on? Get your GODDAMN ticket and move on?” [JACK] Experiencing some air travel rage.
• “ThaT JuSt Doesn’T HelP Me aT All, but I ApPreCiate the ThOugHt.” To Mahi Mahi after hearing him give a long Hawaiian soliloquy.
• “Listen Mahi, I Don’t HaVe TiMe FOR tHiS HoRseShIT!”
• “ThERe’s SecTionS of KauaI? WEll, ThaNkYou!” Exasperated, talking to an operator trying to get the phone number for Tommy in Kauai without having the area code or address.

The weirdest & best parts of this movie

The weird. For me the weirdest part of this movie was Betsy’s reactions to this whole arrangement. Seemed way beyond unbelievable that she would agree to spend a weekend with a creeper like Tommy, and then proceed to be persuaded to nearly marry him (even though she’s been waiting for literally years to marry Jack).

Suddenly she’s desperately impatient and “falls for this stranger” because she can’t get Jack on the phone? It makes her character seem kind of dense / gullible / naive / desperate, and there isn’t really any clues early on that she is any of these things. She doesn’t even seem angry enough at Jack to cast this decision as a revenge play. So. Weird.

But to be honest, the James Caan casting is what made it ALL kind of weird. He seems too old and way too “guido” for a second grade teacher to fall for. No one’s buying that. Tommy played the role well enough, but Buddy the Elf‘s dad is just not the right guy for this film.

I kept trying to picture how the move might look different if Tommy were played by a younger, more attractive gangster-type actor. Whoever the 1992 equivalent of today’s George Clooney would be? I think Al Pacino might have been a much better choice. It needed to be someone that might actually tempt Betsy with his older good looks, his wealth, his maturity, and his willingness to settled down and have a family. But instead, we have this kind of sleezy guy who just gets sleezier as the movie progresses.

After traveling back to Vegas from Hawaii, Tommy goes full Sleeping With the Enemy, getting really aggressive and violent with her, so Betsy is forced to make an escape by disguising herself in a Vegas showgirl costume.

The best. The end scene of this movie more than makes up for all its faults. Jack is frantically trying to find his way back to Vegas to stop Betsy from marrying Tommy. With cancelled flights and time running against him, Jack “hitchhikes” his way onto a non-commercial flight back to Vegas being boarded by Roy Bacon’s Flying Elvises, almost three dozen men dressed in illuminated Elvis costumes, with the side-burned wigs, sunglasses, embroidered eagle designs and white bell bottom jumpsuits. Seeing all this, Jack is stilll unaware that he will be required to dress for the part, (“What’s your cape size? 40 I guess”) and that there will be no soft landing for those who board this flight to Vegas. “Son, we’re sky divers,” Roy tells him. “If you could just drop me…” Jack replies, as all the sky divers snicker and Roy agrees to “drop him” from 3000 feet.

The best comedy comes as Jack is trying to work out which cord to pull first (the yellow or the red one). Roy tells him to “pull the yeller’ one first and the then the red one, as that’s your auxillary chute.” As he tries to memorize these instructions, and frets over what will happen if he does them wrong, another diver tells Jack, “naw, he was just kidding…it’s red, then yellow!” The three go back and forth, with Jack trying to figure out why they are contradicting each other, and both Elvises saying the other was just kidding.

Finally before Jack jumps out the plane he says, “One last time, yellow, then red?” before he is pushed out the open door, “Nooooooooooo!” he screams. He closes his eyes, and chants to himself, “Betsy. Betsy. Betsy.”

From the night sky the Elvises descend at the Bally hotel and Elvis Jack (who has somehow survived the dive) serendipitously hears the cry of Betsy (dressed as the Vegas showgirl) calling out to him. She escapes the clutches of Tommy and reaches the bull’s eyed tarmac as Jack descends. The two re-unite and kiss repeatedly and recount all that they have missed or misunderstood in the last 48 hours.

Betsy says “I was so stupid.”

Jack asks “Did you get a job here?” (noticing her outfit).

Betsy says, “You jumped out of a plane for me.”

And Jack says, “I didn’t want to live if I couldn’t have you, baby.”

And Tommy, looking on from the crowd knows that he has lost her forever.

To tie a bow on it: the happy couple find themselves at the Chapel of the Bells somewhere in Vegas, and are wed in their outfits, as the Flying Elvises look on and The King’s Now or Never plays to the rolling credits.

Wild Cards from this movie

• The movie intro has a great animation where the groom is trying to get to the top of the wedding cake to meet up with his bride. Reminded me of the animated sequences from Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer.
• The man holding up the airport line was Ben Stein (from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off). Where was Expedia back then?

• When Jack is arguing with Betsy about the “arrangement” Tommy has offered, he bites into a wax apple, and, disgusted, throws it back onto the table.
• Chief Orman (played by Peter Boyle) sings songs from South Pacific in an effort to keep Jack busy and away from his wife while in Kauai.
• “Me. I’m everyman.” [JACK]
• [JACK] “I gotta get to the states.” [HI AIRLINE ATTENDANT] “We are a state.” [JACK] “Ok, I gotta get to the mainland.”

Firsts from Nicolas Cage film as Jack Singer

• First time in Las Vegas and Hawaii
• Sky diving (as Elvis)
• Wearing awful sweater vest
• Sleeping under a mirror (in the Ali Baba suite)
• Shaving in a cab
• Working as a P.I.

Recurrence

• Thrown in jail (Multiple)
• Elvis theme (see Wild at Heart)
• At a marriage ceremony (see Raising Arizona)

In Conclusion

It will be interesting to see how many times Nicolas Cage returns to Las Vegas in the WATC(H) ahead. This blockbuster rom-com was not the typical cage faire, but it had some laughs and helped solidify The Cage-The King connection. Might be a while before Cage returns and is Leaving Las Vegas, but for now at least he wound up getting the girl, and hopefully had an uneventful honeymoon in possibly the worst place on earth.

Viva Las Vegas, baby!