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blueskyhorse
Reviews
Alice (2009)
Alice Grows Up, Kicks Butt, Discovers Faithful Love!
Sorry, film-o-philes, I can't offer great analysis of actor X's growth or stagnation. However, as a historian who has read a lot of Victorian children's lit - & had insomniacal nightmares therefrom- I can assure you that this Alice ROCKS! She is a kick-butt, 20-year-old brunette, not a whiny, dreamy 8-year-old. Elements of Carroll's Alice still slither through slithy toves, the Jabberwock is still fearsome, my frabtious boy, & the villains ride mechanical, jet-powered pink flamingos! The trippy dreamy original has grown up into a trippy, dreamy post-apocalypse. Sort of Mad Max re-writes Alice. The acting is excellent to top notch, a total surprise. Syfy's reputation for silly, bad movies has taken a body blow with this. (I cringed watching Adrian Paul in Wraiths of Roanoke & giggled my way through Thor: Hammer of the Gods. The drek far outweighs the gems, IMHO.) For lovers of shock, bloody gore, or faithful reproductions of the original material, this is a disappointment. Keep an open mind, though, & enjoy this thoroughly modern fable. This mini-series has enough twists & turns to keep an intelligent person tripping over wrong guesses & misassumptions. There are no modern, ironic, artsy filters, no monochrome irony - just clear cinematography & lighting appropriate to the situation. The costuming is clever without treacle or triteness. Hatter is called such because of his hat trick. Caterpillar has a striped sweater reminiscent of a caterpillar's belly. Walrus is a fat man with a - you guessed it!- walrus mustache. Alice herself wears a blue sheath dress with stitching suggesting the outline of an apron. See the tendency? And don't miss the librarian armed with a shotgun! Discoveries like these just make you want to watch and revel in the lush, rich texture of this movie. And the ending: perfect. When Alice turned down Jack's proposal, said good-bye to Hatter, & got chucked through the looking glass, I thought, ho-hum, a typical modern "cathartic" ending. Yup, she wakes up in hospital realizing Daddy's really gone, gives up on her search, & now will be a slightly older, wiser young woman. Yup, typical, typical. Even when the construction worker turns out to be Hatter, I thought, oh, man, they ripped off Oz! Here's a person who looks like (Hatter/Scarecrow/Lion/Tin Man) & Wonderland/ Oz was her knocked unconscious.Until Hatter says something like at last he gets his hug. The last 30 seconds twists the movie completely around to a lovely happy ending.