Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Tedfoldol
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
Ketrivie
It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
johannes-damarowsky
After reading the divergent opinions about this movie I realized I had to see it for myself in order to know if it's a waste of time or the opposite.My conclusion had to be: it is not.Although I can imagine people describing the plot as unlikely, I wouldn't consider it unrealistic. The movie itself is more of a case-study of a certain chain of events, showing different aspects and effects. I would definitely say it was interesting and appropriate for expressing an idea: that technology will certainly change the shape of future life.
utopyah
This is the first movie I ever walk out from (after suffering through it for an hour). Badly played, naive, and simply plain boring, it also lacks original ideas and is filled with long dialogues leading nowhere.There are too many characters for any of them to have any depth, the situations are sometimes grotesque (a girl casually reading the newspapers in front of her web cam while she is supposed to talk about a way to "save the world", another guy discussing secret schemes aloud in a crowded internet café, a CIA agent logging in and chatting aloud (too) with the wonderland group right next to his colleagues without them even hearing him?!). Anyone seems to be able to join the group, yet personalities and the CIA strive to gain access to the website?! After a while, you just wish the characters would shut up. Not only because their dialogues are bad, but because their acting is bad too and the situations are totally unrealistic.It could have been a great movie. It was greatly screwed up. And all the people leaving the room confirmed this impression. Thank you, come again!
Sebastian H
I dare say the audience at our local surprise sneak preview theater is a hardened bunch. Yes, some of us have been attending the traditional weekly sneak showing regularly for well over a decade. We have had atrocities like "House of 1000 Corpses" and "Street Fighter" forced upon us. But we still come back every Thursday. Maybe we *do* have a masochistic streak after all.And today we were served again with this cinematic dud that ranks up there with the worst of the worst. I don't know where to begin. The annoying visualization of "internet chat room", most likely an out-of-the-box Adobe Premiere effect. The fact that *everything* in this movie is conveyed by an unnerving, never ending, multilingual dialog where apparently the idea of quality was sacrificed for quantity. The cheap green screen technology. No characters to identify with. And the whole idea behind the film feels so flat and naive, it's a pain to watch. You could literally feel the audience detach from the movie in disbelief during the first fifteen minutes.For a student group assignment at a film seminar, this would be a fine work. But it's a long way from there to the movie theater.
Coventry
This movie, directed by the two fairly inexperienced but obviously over-ambitious and talented French filmmakers Nicolas Alberny & Jean Mach, quite possibly has the most original and avant-garde screenplay that I've seen in many years. It's also another proof that you don't need a lot of money in order to make a film that is captivating and groundbreaking. "8th Wonderland" clearly cost next to nothing, but witty satirical ideas and superbly drawn characterizations don't require a large budget; just an intelligent and versatile crew and an enthusiast ensemble cast. The concept of "8th Wonderland" is simultaneously simple and genius. The title refers to the very first virtual nation in which people of all nationalities, religions and cultures unite in chat rooms to debate and vote on how they could improve ruling the outside world. And this time the members – citizens, if you will – of 8th Wonderland aren't loud-mouthed geeks hiding safely behind their computers, but devoted and resourceful academics that put their words into deeds as well. On a weekly basis, the citizens of 8th Wonderland democratically vote on an initiative during a referendum and subsequently appoint someone to execute the agreed actions. Whether it concerns placing condom vending machines in the Vatican, abduct world class soccer players to have them fabricate their own shoes amidst child laborers or boycotting the nuclear energy negotiations between Russia and Iran, the initiatives of "8th Wonderland" always make the world press and the virtual nation becomes immeasurably popular very fast. Parallel with the success, inevitably the first obstacles and issues arise as well. Frauds declaring themselves the mastermind behind 8th Wonderland, the safeguarding of loyal members after they risked their lives, dealing with the public opinion in case of false advertising or unpopular initiatives or feeling the burning breath of hunting FBI services in their neck. "8th Wonderland" definitely isn't an adrenalin-rushing thriller (most of the time it's just people talking straight into the camera, like they are in chat rooms) but it's nevertheless a compelling and politically engaging cinematic experiment that deserves all the praise and recommendation it can get! The characters are identifiable, the depiction of the media and public opinions are accurate and precise and the dialogs are stupendously written. Some of the discussed initiatives of the 8th Wonderland committee appear to be far-fetched and impossible to carry out, but there's always a logical clarification of what they do and a plausible breakdown of how they do it. The credibility of "8th Wonderland" largely relies on small but important and punctilious details, like for example the chatters occasionally mixing in words and swearing of their own native language, authentic news bulletin images and reports and members deciding to leave the group out of fear for retribution. The ensemble cast is marvelous and the computer engineered effects (for example, the illustration of a virtual chatting circle) are reasonably impressive; especially for computer illiterates like myself. Recommended in case you're on the lookout for something entirely new, refreshing and creative.
