I tend to forget about the sub-genre of story-retellings, but whenever I find one I almost always fall into immediate, fanatical, passionate love with it.
Such is the case with my latest find: Alice.
I found this little gem by clicking random videos on YouTube. I found a fan-vid for the main couple that was so impressively spliced together and the movie itself looked so pretty and enticing (and heck, Andrew Lee Potts quite tickles my fancy!) I felt like I would be doing myself a great injustice for not tracking it down and watching it. I do not hesitate to tell you that I was correct.
Now, “movie” is a little deceptive. For those not in-the-know (I wasn’t), Alice is a miniseries that aired on the SyFy channel circa 2009. However, as a DVD it runs together so seamlessly that I can’t quite tell where the original breaks would have been, even after multiple viewings. And, let’s be honest, I’m far too lazy to research it on my own. The DVD runs for three hours, though several clips are listed as “deleted scenes” on YouTube which adds to my inability to guess how the miniseries was “originally viewed.” In any case, I shall hereafter refer to it as “movie” since that’s how I’ve watched it.
Alice is, as you might imagine, a re-exploration of the wonderful world of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland. But this isn’t the Wonderland of children’s stories: as our world has changed and evolved and industrialized over the past 150 years, so has Wonderland. The Queen of Hearts now rules Wonderland by keeping her subjects duped with the positive emotions of “Oysters” (people from our world) that have been harvested like corn from a Nebraskan field. Jack, Alice’s boyfriend, finds himself kidnapped into Wonderland, and she (being the cool-headed, black-belted, independent woman that she is) sets off on an adventure to find and rescue him.
There were seriously so many things I loved about this movie, but chief among them were the characterizations. Alice’s reaction to being thrown into a completely abnormal, crazy, dangerous world is fully believable and realistic: she trusts everyone to follow the same social rules set in her world, she is visibly scared and unsure of herself (even though she can wail on the villains, with her awesome karate skills), and her goals and motivations are completely self-interested. Her decision process is absolutely fascinating: she’s presented with a problem, she obviously wants to take charge of the matter at hand but she doesn’t know how, she is completely dependent upon her guide (“Hatter,” obviously), and she tries to consider all of her options, though really all she ever does is take what appears to be the path of least resistance directly towards her goal of rescuing Jack. As a viewer, it’s phenomenal, because you can see how taking a more patient approach or how listening to Hatter more carefully might actually help her more in the end.
And what a perfect segue into my other favorite character of the movie…Hatter! He’s the most perfect concoction of caring companion, jovial joker, and savvy scoundrel any girl could ever want…but, of course, Alice is so bent on Jack she doesn’t notice him. It's so heartbreaking! With Hatter, the character development in this movie really shines, and it happens so subtly! I will admit—the first time I watched the film, I thought the writers were trying to pull a few fast ones on me, but the second time through, I noticed quite a few more nuances, which made the development all the more rewarding.
When we meet Hatter, he appears to be your typical selfish drug lord/tea shoppist. When he agrees to help Alice, he appears to be doing it for his own ends. However, little by little, we get to know Hatter, and we see that he’s just as complex of a human being as the rest of us. He’s just trying to do what he believes he “has to in order to survive” (a very well-done theme of the movie, I might add), and in reality, what he’s doing is helping many, many others. I think a big part of his character is that he’s just always stuck in the wrong place—between the two sides of the war for Wonderland—at the wrong time—uh…now—and he just really wants to find somewhere he doesn’t have to look behind his back or scrounge for a living. I think that’s something we can all relate to, in our own ways.
Of course, it also helps that he’s freaking hot.
I wouldn’t say the movie is without flaws—there are a few plot holes left unfilled and a few WTH? moments—but the quality material and acting surrounding them make for ample atonement in my book.
The real selling point for me was the kiss at the end…This one is up there with surpasses That Thing You Do! it is that good of a movie kiss.
And you should know: I take the matter of “Favorite Movie Kisses” very, very seriously.
--Heather
No comments:
Post a Comment