A man who doesn’t speak (Nicolas Cage) finds all wheels on his pretty swanky looking car destroyed while driving through nowhere, USA. He’s close to one of those small towns that always spell trouble in any horror movie, and the local mechanic’s unwillingness to accept a credit card as well as the absence of a working ATM, do indeed not bode well for him.
On the positive side, the mechanic is perfectly willing to accept payment through work, and quickly our protagonist finds himself tasked by one Tex Macadoo (Ric Reitz) to clean up an indoor amusement arcade full of creepy and weird animatronic dolls singing creepy songs nobody in their right minds would ever unleash on children. But then, these were created by a group of serial killers of kids. The man doesn’t seem to be too bothered to be locked in there for the night; neither does he lose his cool when some of the animatronics start to attack. But then, if I were that good at killing the things, I probably wouldn’t be either. The man does insist strictly on his regular pauses and intense pinball playing, though.
Also becoming involved will be a band of teens lead by Liv (Emily Tosta), out to burn down Willy’s Wonderland to stop the regular human sacrifices (like our guy, in theory) made to the animatronics by their elder townies, and mostly ending up pretty dead. The things, you understand, are possessed by the spirits of those serial killers who once ran the arcade thanks to a Satanic ritual, as these things go.
For a gimmick movie about a speechless Nic Cage kicking the furry asses of animatronic mascots as portrayed by people in suits, Kevin Lewis’s Willy’s Wonderland is actually pretty great. At the very least, it’s a very fun little movie with a genuinely weird sense of humour, and a wonderful willingness to not explain a single thing about its main character. What’s with his autism spectrum style adherence to pause times? Why does he take possessed animatronics quite this much in stride? Are his energy drinks like Popeyes’s spinach? Where did he learn fighting monsters? The film sure isn’t telling.
That’s perfectly okay, though, for Cage has us covered, providing the character the credits call The Janitor (he is absolutely deserving of capitalisation) with all kinds of annoyed, smouldering, grumpy, non-plussed but never confused facial expressions, doing so much great and funny work via face and body language, the on paper bizarre idea to have Nicolas Cage not speak in a movie turns out to be absolutely brilliant, showing off the great man’s insane prowess at larger than life acting to the fullest while also reminding this viewer of how funny Cage can be when he wants to.
Because this has become a bit of a tradition by now, the film’s also drenching its hero in various fluids.
It’s not all Cage all of the time, of course, but even though none of the younger actors or character actors does reach the exalted level of the guy, they do know how to deliver punchlines; even better, most of the punchlines are actually pretty funny, so the scenes without Cage don’t provoke the wish to get back to the real business but are indeed just as entertaining as the rest. Which is not at all a given with this sort of project, and, added to Cage and the general weird yet somewhat creepy and certainly creatively funny aspect of the whole affair, turns Willy’s Wonderland into what I really didn’t expect it to be: a film that’s fun and funny as a film beyond its gimmick and The Cage.
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