Willy's Wonderland: Battling The Demons Beneath US Consumer Paradise

 

Turning up just in time as anarchistic antidote to the artificially soothing sappy Oscar bait like Nomadland and Minari, Willy's Wonderland brashly sabotages American Dream consumer paradise tall tale antics while let's just say, irreverently subverting its own intentions as well. Not to mention seemingly hitching a ride on the current wave of red state versus blue state pandemonium in progress finding its way from this crisis ridden country to the screen.

That never disappointing perpetually in perfected character surreal maniac Nicolas Cage takes charge of the narrative and this movie without uttering a single word. Literally. Billed as The Janitor, Cage is hoodwinked by a depraved rural community in the Deep South while passing through, and set up as that Wonderland sacrifice to local serial killers, seemingly cousins of Cookie Monster animal robots within. Don't ask.

Goaded by the local mayor into scrubbing clean the dilapidated funland premises overnight behind locked doors in exchange for fixing up his car they've just trashed, The Janitor wordlessly obliges hyped up on endless cans of energy juice, while fending off the homicidal cuddly robots by murdering them instead - in large part resolved with smashing their internal batteries one by one to bits.While an annoying sidebar gang of rowdy teens infiltrating the depraved establishment to hopefully burn it down, could have well been left on the cutting room floor.

And eerily a reflection of the growing divisive showdown in this country between the red states and blue states, outsiders to this pathological southern tribal culture must be sacrificed to maintain their threatened stability and disappearing way of life. What that metaphorical threat may be - intimated most recently in Buck Run and Let Him Go - a majority tidal wave threatening rural values, religious fundamentalism, and black people as the sacrificial lambs to deflect from economic instability since Jim Crow - or even increasingly capitalist feeding frenzy, unattainable rabid consumerism. In any case, the Capitol Hill decked out fantasy fashion statements siege may be just the symptom of what's in store.

 

Prairie Miller