Willy’s Wonderland (2021)
Directed by Kevin Lewis

Sometimes a movie shows up with a premise so amazing that, without knowing anything else about it, you know that you need to see it immediately. All I needed to see was one teaser image of Nicolas Cage squaring off against an evil animatronic to know that I wanted to see Willy’s Wonderland more than anything. The idea of scenery-chewing legend Nicolas Cage murdering evil Five Nights At Freddy’s knockoffs is so brilliant and perfect that I have no idea how it even took them this long to come up with it, especially because Five Nights was huge a couple years ago, not so much anymore. Then I watched it. Full disclosure, I had planned to publish a review for a different movie today, but after seeing Willy’s Wonderland I was so furious at how terrible it is that I bumped the other movie to next week so I could get this all out while it’s still fresh in my head. I played my hand a bit early here, so if you want to know why Willy’s Wonderland is awful, please keep reading.

Solid Premise. This Is All Okay.

Willy’s Wonderland starts with that icon of style Nicolas Cage driving down a lonely country road before hitting a carefully placed row of tire shredders. A tow truck instantly, and suspiciously emerges, and offers Cage a tow to his mechanic shop. Cage says nothing but accompanies him back, whereupon the mechanic tells Cage he will repair his vehicle in exchange for Cage doing some maintenance at the defunct Chuck E Cheese type restaurant/arcade Willy’s Wonderland. Cage says nothing but agrees. While Cage is cleaning up the dilapidated building, a group of teens(?) head there as well, determined to burn down the building because everyone in town knows it is a den of evil and madness. While cleaning, very effectively I might add, Cage has to fight the murderous animatronics, silently, because Cage never says a word in the entire film.

What I Expected Vs. What I Got.

Before I start frothing at the mouth with how mad I am at Willy’s Wonderland, let me explain why I hate this movie so much. I expected exactly two things from Willy’s Wonderland, and even if everything else sucked, if I was given these two things I would be happy. I expected Nicolas Cage chewing scenery in an absurd situation and I expected cool, or at least fun, action sequences where Cage creatively murders animatronics. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. As for the first point, as I mentioned before, Nicolas Cage never speaks in Willy’s Wonderland. Not only does Cage never speak, he barely emotes or even reacts to anything happening around him, even when he has to fight these monsters. Sure, he gets an ‘intense expression’ when killing them, but it’s not nearly over the top enough to be fun or enjoyable in any way.

Where Everything Really Goes Downhill.

As for the second point, the action sequences, if I can even call them that, were some of the most disappointing sequences in a movie I have ever seen. Here’s the first fight, an animatronic ostrich attacks Cage, who is holding a mop. During the fight, Cage breaks the mop in two, and I was expecting him to do something cool or fun or visually entertaining, but instead of anything good, Cage just hits the ostrich with the mop halves repeatedly until the animatronic dies. And every fight is like this! No clever plans, no fun take on how he could exploit the weaknesses of each individual animatronic, like going for the legs of the ostrich or taping up the mouth of the alligator, just boring, direct, blandly filmed violence. I’m not asking for The Raid: Redemption level choreography, but anyone who is reading this could have choreographed better action sequences in five minutes. And if they couldn’t choreograph better action sequences because of limitations from the animal costumes, then how about just don’t make the movie?

There Was An Attempt At A Story. It Did Not Work.

It’s kind of redundant at this point to say Willy’s Wonderland is dumb, but holy shit, this movie is spectacularly dumb. Not fun dumb or goofy dumb, it is frustrating dumb. The main plotline of Cage fighting these animatronics doesn’t even matter, because the real story focuses on one of the teens who is trying to destroy Willy’s Wonderland and what her backstory and connection to the animatronics are. Cage doesn’t need to be in this movie, and if it was about a group of teenagers locked in a Chuck E Cheese’s trying to fight off killer animatronics, this probably would have been much better. And don’t even get me started on the twist. Calling it nonsense is an insult to nonsense. The “plot” of this movie could be solved in five minutes if any character applied one percent of their brainpower, and that might be okay if the rest of the movie was dumb fun, but because it isn’t this just becomes annoying.

Frustratingly, There Are Good Parts Of This Movie.

What pisses me off, even more, is that this movie had every opportunity to be great. You have Nicolas Cage, a B-movie icon and legend of absurd performances, you have an awesome location/set in Willy’s Wonderland, which looks great, you even have a bevy of creepy animatronics in the Willy’s Wonderland cadre. Let me focus on the good for a second and say the saving grace of this movie is these monsters. They’re well designed, creepy, and the performances of the people in the suits were really good. Everyone in one of those suits deserves a better movie than this, especially Willy, who is really creepy, particularly during a song/monologue he has that is pitch-perfect. What could have been…

It All Adds Up To a Very Disappointing Experience.

Part of what makes me so angry at Willy’s Wonderland is that I was so hyped for it when I first heard about it. I love Nicolas Cage, I love his ridiculous movies and I love his serious movies, and I should have known better than to get my hopes up because, for every great movie he’s in, he’s in 10 terrible ones. Willy’s Wonderland is nothing but wasted potential, and I am baffled that anyone has given this a positive review. For me, this is barely even a movie, let alone one I could enjoy and recommend. If you liked Willy’s Wonderland, I’m glad you got more out of it than I did, but I just don’t see how. If you’re looking for an absurd Nicolas Cage performance in a weird out-there movie, I’d really recommend either Mandy or Color Out Of Space, two of my favorite Nic Cage movies from recent years. Well, I’m glad I got that off my chest, next week I’ll hopefully go back to talking about movies I like.