Willy’s Wonderlandis a film in whichNicolas Cagebeats the absolute shit out of animatronic puppets possessed by the souls of Satan-worshipping serial killers, which is about as foolproof a filmmaking formula as humanly possible. That’s 1 + 1, man. That’s baby’s first midnight movie. It would take a pretty massive goofing to turnWilly’s Wonderlandinto anything less than a splatter-piece that I want projected onto my living room wall 24/7 at audio levels dangerous to the human ear. And yet,and yet, I’m here to report thatWilly’s Wonderland—directed byKevin Lewis, from a script byG.O. Parsons—has indeed goofed it, and it’s goofed it in one central way:Willy’s Wonderlandfundamentally misunderstands the gonzo appeal of Nicolas Cage, especially late-era Nicolas Cage.
To be fair, I’ve writtenthousands of words for this very siteon Cage, and I still struggle to explain that appeal. The biggest misconception around that wonderful Oscar-winning madman is that people who enjoy Nicolas Cage simply enjoy a good car crash. The reality is, Cage isincredibly goodat what he does, but what he does is different from how 100% of other human beings would do it. He doesn’t process and translate emotions to screen like a person of this Earth. FromVampire’s Kiss, straight through the holy late-90s trinity ofThe Rock/Con Air/Face Off, and into more recent fare likeMandyandColor out of Space, Cage’s gift has been delivering lines—delivering entire performances—like his brain translated the script into a Salvador Dali painting. It’s a thrill. Watching Nicolas Cage share a scene is like staring at a storm cloud and trying to predict the shape of the lightning.
Willy’s Wonderlandwants so badly to cash in on the ~Crazy Cage~ aesthetic but doesn’t do anything beyond placing him physically inside a whacky scenario. Cage’s character, credited only as “The Janitor,” doesn’t say a single word throughout the entire movie. That’s probably not fully on Lewis and Parsons' shoulders; I’msureCage himself had a say in the choice. But the result is so oddly boring, and please keep in mind I’m saying this about a film in which Nicolas Cage stomps a robot gorilla’s head into a urinal. But it’s a move that gives Cage nothing to chew on, when the appeal of the performer’s best roles is in the unorthodox way he chews. To rob Nicolas Cage of a single line reading is like castingGene Kellyto sit in a wheelchair.
(And, to be clear, the energy ofWilly’s Wonderlandis not of the fabled Sleepy Cage variety, something likeBangkok Dangerous, where the actor is in a coma for the entirety of the film. Cage is stillcommittedto the aggressive silence ofWilly’s Wonderland.)
Which isn’t to say late-career Cage can’t turn a quiet character into something eye-catching. He doesn’t have much more to say than a wordless grief howl inMandy,Panos Cosmato’s tale of grief, revenge, and demon bikers. He also fits a similar stoic loner stereotype inPrisoners of the Ghostland,Sion Sono’s surreal apocalypse samurai-western that premiered just last month at Sundance. But what those films do is give Cagechoices.Part of the joy of watching Cage act is seeing what he does with those choices, whether it’s sitting in complete stillness, downing a bottle of liquor in his underwater, orbellowing the word “testicle"into a radiated wasteland. The only choiceWilly’s Wonderlandmakes is to plop a mute, emotionless Cage into a crazy situation, which isn’t doing the work. It’s shallow, bordering on insulting, to assume the only thing an audience wants from Cage is toexist, as if he’s more meme than performer. Yes, Cage’s entire career has been consistently, often lovingly meme’d into oblivion—Vampire’s Kissis an especially iconic case—but that’s not where the creative process shouldstart.
Here’s the thing: I’d still recommendWilly’s Wonderlandfor anyone who just wants what it says on the tin, because the actual scenes of man-on-puppet violence are viscerally entertaining. I even heard from a friend who goes to another school that it’s a hell of a watch while stoned. But it’s written in stone that a movie can’t be classified as Modern Classic Cage if you could replace Nicolas Cage without much of a notable difference.
