A week later and I'm still reeling from the Snyder Cut, mainly because there are rafts of people all over the internet acting as if it was the second coming of Cinema Jesus and it baffles me. Then I remember that the pandemic has reduced a large majority of the population's brains to mush and we live in a timeline where Mrs Brown's Boys not only exist but wins awards. So no more of this Justice League garbage; I will entertain no further speak of Ben Affleck being the best Batman (gibberish!), I will allow no blathering about resurrecting the Snyderverse (pish and piffle!) and that is my final word on it.
Prior to last week's phoenix-like revival I had not been completely inactive. I have been consuming movies on a fairly regular basis but my attention span has been reduced to the breadth of a malnourished gnat and my ability to concentrate has diminished to the extent that I get distracted from my distractions at the drop of a hat; hence I've erred on the side of watching movies I've already seen a hyperbolic million times over. The result of that is that I have a pile of unwatched DVDs waiting for me to get my arse in gear and trawl though them, a task that has not helped by this new-fangled theatrical release method whereby you can instantly watch a brand new film for the price of a tub of ice cream on YouTube, distracting me from my distractions. So the pile remained a pile and I found myself in front of my definitely-not-cinema-screen-sized TV watching the latest in a long line of bizarre Nicholas Cage movies.
Willy's Wonderland had a trailer that promised a lot, as trailers do nowadays. I maintain you can discern the overall quality of a film based largely on its trailer; the more of the plot they give away, the crappier you outcome is going to be. Just go on YouTube and watch a couple of the new trailer compilations; you will eventually find a host of made-for-DVD/streaming movie trailers (mainly horrors and "thrillers") that effectively just summarize the plot from start to finish. I assume they just couldn't afford the editors. Not so Willy's Wonderland which had a trailer that gave you enough to reel you in but actually didn't spoil too much. Plus, it's Nic Cage so even when it's terrible it's still hilarious.
In essence, the plot is just Five Nights at Freddy's, a confusingly popular series of video games where you play the night-watchman at a family restaurant where the animatronics come alive at night and murder the shit out of you. That's the entire premise of all 84 games [citation required on that number. It may only be 5. Or 6 maybe. Somebody less lazy than me will look it up.] but it doesn't stop people shelling out their hard earned cash every time a new one comes out or on the associated terrible merchandise. There has been a FNAF movie in development hell for years (and is still on the horizon under the watchful eye of Christopher Columbus) so these guys just straight-up bypassed any copyright issues by changing the name of the restaurant, saved up their pocket money and dropped a low-budget knock off in a fraction of the time. Kudos to them. So anyway Cage has to work off a garage fee for his ludicrous car tyres by cleaning the "haunted restaurant" and we just have to sit back and wait for all hell to break loose. Which it kind of does, but just not as much as you might have hoped.
Cage is his usual insane self, but everything around him doesn't quite hit the mark. The main "origin" of the bad guys is that they're a murderous satanic cult who used a ritual to inhabit the animatronics, which is ok I guess and does line up the sort of twist at the end, but it's a lame twist, a big bag of cliché and actually who cares? It would probably be better to just not know how or why the big furry bastards rampage around like they do and just get to the slaughtering. Aside from Cage there's a non-descript glut of teenagers who get trapped inside the restaurant because they were trying to burn it down but one of them fell through a roof or something. Apparently half of them are former Viners or YouTubers or something, which explains why they can't act for shit and why nobody cares when they get offed by a fuzzy orange ferret. Or probably a weasel if it's called Willy I guess. There's even a simultaneously gratuitous/nudity-free sex scene which is cringe inducing enough that the inevitable mid-coital butchering almost elicited a round of applause. The fight scenes are all noticeably awkward; the creature performers obviously couldn't see a damn thing and the choreographers seem to have phoned it in a touch. It could have been so glorious but it reminds me of the old black and white adventure movies where the actors getting attacked by an octopus would fling it's rubber tentacles around themselves wildy; the truth is, The Banana Splits remake from a couple of years ago did this whole shtick already and did it so much better for probably not a lot more expenditure. Clearly it's a case of who you know not how little you pay for them.
The most interesting thing about Willy's Wonderland is that Nic Cage says literally nothing throughout the entire thing. Nothing. Nada. He lets out the occasional grunt when he's laying the smack down on the fuzzy antagonists, but otherwise nothing. The genius of this of course is that even though it renders it very difficult for Nic to chew the scenery, he somehow still manages to ham it up to the nines playing a character that more closely resembles the online create-a-character avatar of someone with their parent's credit card details. Clearly rich enough to be bombing around in whatever high end sports car it is (I want to say Lamborghini, but I know less about cars than I do about formal film criticism) as well as clearly combat trained enough to be completely unaffected by being assaulted in the toilet be a 6 foot animatronic gorilla. His entire personality appears to revolve around being not only fastidious in his cleaning habits, but also in his need to consume energy drinks at regular enough intervals that he sets an alarm on his watch and even leaves a hapless teenager to fight a potentially deadly pixie monster on her own because his schedule demands he replenish his electrolytes. All while saying absolutely nothing at all. Nothing else in the script really leans into the video game aesthetic, but the more I think about it, the more it fits. It even has a mini game where Cage intermittently plays pinball during his breaks. The only thing missing is a visible energy bar and a ludicrous inventory in a duffle bag that couldn't possible carry that many items.
I really wanted to enjoy Willy's Wonderland and I did to an
extent; there are a couple of chucklesome moments and it doesn't take itself
seriously in any way shape or form. When it hits the shelves on DVD for a fiver
I'll probably shell out for a copy; it is delightfully batshit and doesn't
really pretend to be anything but. Go in with little to no expectations and
you'll not come out disappointed necessarily and wait for Five Nights at
Freddy's if you must. Just don't hold your breath.
This is the Banana Splits blog in case you were interested.
https://angerinamansuit.blogspot.com/2020/03/tra-la-la-tra-la-la-la-tra-la-la-tra-la.html
Add me on Facebook if your conscience allows: https://www.facebook.com/angerinamansuit
I occasionally despair at the human race on twitter: @angerinamansuit
No comments:
Post a Comment