In WILLY’S WONDERLAND, a mysterious loner (Nicolas Cage) battles life-sized animatronic characters in an abandoned family fun center. It’s ridiculous, but if you don’t take it remotely seriously, it’s a lot of fun.
The film begins with the loner driving through rural America, where his car ends up kaput. Lacking the money to pay for the repairs, he’s offered a deal: spend the night cleaning up Willy’s Wonderland, an abandoned family fun center, and he’ll earn the thousand dollars he needs and get back on the lonesome road. The catch is the center is haunted by evil spirits inhabiting the animatronic character mascots residing there. Meanwhile, a survivor of a previous sacrifice shows up with her friends to exact revenge. The loner, now the Janitor, resolves to clean the building as promised while fighting his way through animatronic monsters.
Okay, so the Janitor has zero character development other than he’s hooked on canned punch, the survivor’s friends are disposable cannon fodder making terrible decisions, the animatronic bad guys aren’t all that tough, and the whole thing is kinda cartoonish with a paint by numbers horror plot, but whatever. I knew going into this one not to take it at all seriously and that I’d get to see Nicolas Cage beat up animatronic mascots, a promise that is signed, sealed, and delivered. In short, I liked this one and thought it was good, clean fun.
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