USA, 2003
Director: James Cox
Cast: Val Kilmer, Kate Bosworth
Even with a maximum amount of buzz surrounding it, Wonderland all but skipped theaters, at least in my area. And while this type of theater booking reasoning has always bothered me, I can see why Hollywood does it. After working in a theater for so long, you begin to understand that most of the public are idiots who clamor for movies about souped-up cars and live-action versions of fat cartoon cats. Why lose money on a smaller film while you can fill up a stadium-seater with 168 screens of Lord of the Rings?

This brings me to home video. It’s really the only way to see any small films in Oklahoma. And even then, when all you have is Blockbuster and Hollywood, it’s still a ***censored*** Goonie-treasure hunt. While lately the Blockbuster by my house has been better (they did have plenty of unrented copies of Beyond Re-Animator and Lost in Translation last week), it’s always hit-and-miss. So, naturally, even though I did have low hopes for the film itself, I was glad to see that, ten minutes before closing on a Wednesday night, there were still plenty of copies of Wonderland, all waiting to be checked out.

One of my favorite sub-genres of film are biopics about the more outré members (no pun intended) of society, especially when it comes to porn and the like, and with a film like this, I bet everyone was expecting a more true to life version of Boogie Nights, or a brilliant mystery like Auto-Focus. Unfortunately, it was more like Blow, except with John Holmes and no actual blowing.

Horribly mis-directed by James Cox, Wonderland is a slap-dash retelling of the little-known Wonderland murders that apparently implicated the then ex-porn star/ then current coke-head John Holmes. It’s told in a low-rent Kurosawa multiple-POV non-linear fashion that’s more annoying than innovative. And that’s basically it. We learn nothing. We’re really not told anything. We’re just shown a glimpse into the lives of grimy, irritating characters that sit around non-stop, snort coke and plan botched heists.

Val Kilmer stars as Johnny “Wadd” Holmes, but I don’t think he knows it. The gloriously overrated current “it girl” Kate (no relation to Brian) Bosworth is his annoying girlfriend. Lisa Kudrow, Josh Lucas and Eric Bogosian are in there somewhere too. Heir/skank Paris Hilton has a wordless, less-than-a-minute cameo as a girl on a boat (actually, not giving her any lines was the only good idea this film had, but if he truly had any good ideas, he would of not had her at in this all).  Everyone overacts, everyone over-emotes, everyone in this movie sucks and should be blacklisted from Hollywood.

Also—don’t get fooled into thinking this movie is about John Holmes—it’s not. There is no interesting life-history, no behind the scenes and not one glimpse of his 13-inch manhood. Not one. Change the main character and this movie could have been a standard crime thriller. It could have been about Gary Coleman and you wouldn’t have had to of changed one line of dialogue. And how do you have a movie about John Holmes and not have any sex? That’s like making a movie about the Gospel of John and not including Christ—it just makes no sense.

On the plus side, included on the second disc is the feature-length, VCA-made documentary Wadd. This is a billion times better than Wonderland itself, and tells you more than the actual movie does. If it’s available individually, I say snap it up.

Overall, Wonderland isn’t even the price of a rental. It’s cheaper just to take a ***censored*** and smear it on the TV, because it’s the exact same thing at half the price.

Louis Fowler is a frequent contributor to Cinema Eye and Hitch Magazine. He is also the publisher of Damaged Magazine, a new issue of which is coming soon.