Bizarre Nicolas

The nutty nephew of director Francis Coppola, Nicolas Cage has grown into an actor of gonzo renown. Other actors study their lines. He lives each role, eating a live cockroach in Vampire's Kiss because anything less wouldn't be real. His specialty is white-trash slapstick, using rockabilly body English to enliven the antics of his irresponsible runaways in Raising Arizona, Zandalee, and Wild at Heart, where he bopped like an Elvis imitator in snakeskin boots. His new film, Honeymoon in Vegas, is wall-to-wall

Elvis wannabes. Cage plays a normal (for him) guy who loses fiancee Sarah Jessica Parker to crinkly James Caan in a poker game during a Vegas convention of Elvis look-alikes. The hotel lobby is a sea of sideburns. The action climax comes when Cage parachutes out of a plane with a skydiving team called the Flying Elvises. It's one of the few times in a Nic Cage film when the outside world is weirder than he is. This reality check in reverse gives him the cold shakes.

JAMES WOLCOTT