John “Johnny Wadd” Holmes was solely noteworthy because of his prodigious member, and director James Cox’s foolish decision to only perfunctorily mention the porn legend’s elephantine organ in Wonderland is indicative of this ludicrous, pointless Rashomon-meets-Boogie Nights saga. Detailing Holmes’ alleged participation in a 1981 murder case involving his scuzzy drug-pushing associates, Cox’s film proves more fascinated by junkiedom than Holmes’ sex career, fetishistically lavishing attention on filthy psychos (Dylan McDermott, Josh Lucas, Tim Blake Nelson) snorting coke, playing with guns, and generally acting like left-over degenerates from The Salton Sea or Spun. Val Kilmer brings a level of pathetic shadiness to his shifty, cocaine-manic Holmes, and his scenes with estranged wife Sharon (Lisa Kudrow) have a balls-to-the-wall desperation that almost sneak some genuine emotion into this putrid muck. His high-strung performance, however, is wasted on a film not only unwarrantedly interested in B-list celebrity-gone-to-seed, but also misguidedly convinced that its E! True Hollywood Story-ish narrative is something other than a mere footnote to its sorry subject’s limp rise-and-fall life story.
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