Nic Cage's appeal is the way he acts... while he's speaking! Taking away his lines means anyone could have stood there and looked dumb. I'm a huge Nic fan but this was a dud.
Look at this fucking imdb "featured review" for Willy's Wonderland, the cinematic masterpiece where Nicolas Cage acts his socks off without making a single sound that's not a grunt of exertion.
Like, he explicitly chose to do that!
so I decided with Kevin, the director, to go full Harpo Marx and take all the dialogue out because I thought that would be a fun acting challenge to see how much I could communicate without words and only with movement and facial expressions
Anyway, watch Willy's Wonderland if you can watch bloody slasher comedies, It's Good.