Foreign Territory

Let’s be very clear: I am not a Science Fiction person. I’ve never even been able to sit through the flicks that straddle the line between Sci-fi and horror. I’ve dodged Alien and Predator more times than I can actually count. However, SyFy (used to be the Sci-fi channel. Not terribly sure what the name change was all about. Did the channel have a mid-life crisis?) has put out a couple of miniseries/movies that have really tickled my fancy. The first was Tin Man, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz. Recently the boy and I stumbled on another, Alice.

(To give credit where credit is due, the boy saw it. I was busy in the incredibly slim horror section (hey, Wal-Mart, you suck.) seeing what founts o’ cheese I could lay hands on.) We ended up watching Alice while I was having a hangover day (hangovers tend to leave me on the couch completely immobile). Otherwise it’s highly unlikely I could have sat still for the entire thing. It’s running time is 180 minutes . I think that’s pretty lengthy, even for normal people.

The movie starts off with full grown Alice stumbling through a mirror while chasing after boyfriend Jack. It just happens to be Wonderland she stumbles into. This Wonderland is nothing like the cartoon version or Burton’s take. To me this Wonderland was closer to a movie representation of American McGee’s Alice (why oh why has this not been made into a movie yet? Sigh). While it wasn’t nearly as dark as McGee’s Alice, it was a much darker, more adult version than the other two. For the most part the buildings in this Wonderland teetered in the air. I imagine this caused plenty of heads to spin given the commonness of fear of heights. Also the stark grayness of the outside and the odd foliage on the inside of the buildings created an air of confusion that resonated at a deeper level than most other interpretations ever managed to reach.

In this version of Wonderland the Queen of Hearts (played by Kathy Bates) is as bad as ever. She runs the land and a casino where kidnapped humans (brought through the looking glass) are being drained of emotions. The emotions are being sold to the people of Wonderland thus creating a society jonesing for quick gratification. Of course any societal faction has to have a counter faction and Wonderland has the Resistance.

Alice traipses about Wonderland trying to devise a plan to get to Jack and get him home. Shortly in she finds that the ring Jack has left her with is the all important stone of Wonderland. The ring powers the looking glass. Not only does Alice think that this will be a good bargaining chip for her but so do the other characters she meets up with. Plenty of battles, psychological torture, a deranged hit man with a bunny head, a reuniting with daddy plot line, flying motorized flamingos, and a shitload of other insanity later (seriously this flick was epic in its plot device undertaking) Alice manages to save the day, get home, and get herself a happy ending.

The internets are pretty much split on this one. Some are saying it’s a whole lot of nothing while others a calling it a delightful fantasy. I think it could have been a little bit shorter and it really would have benefitted from a different choice of actress for the lead. Caterina Scorsone gave one of the driest performances I may have ever seen. It was kind of like someone stuffed a corpse and worked it around on screen via puppet strings. Also, can we get Matthew Frewer some Xanax? ‘Cause he needs to calm the fuck down. While the White Knight’s part of the meandering plot was one of the more endearing parts, watching him was kind of exhausting. There wasn’t near enough Tim Curry for my taste. I really do love me some Tim Curry. Although, I hope he lays off the fried foods because if he doesn’t I’m worried we may never see him play Pennywise in a R rated remake of Stephen King’s It. (Shut up, it’s going to happen.)

And it sounds like I’m completely panning this one but I’m not! Allow me to get to the good stuff now. I’ve got to speak on Colm Meaney. I’ve seen him do the cop thing a couple of times. He’s good at that. But in this one he played the King of Hearts. I found myself unexpectedly touched by his character’s speech to his wife near the end. He combined just the right amount of gruffness and sadness to make the feelings believable.

The best (by far) part about Alice was Andrew-Lee Potts. I can honestly say from the second I saw him on the movie cover (having no idea who it was) I was thinking that the character was going to strike gold. There was simply something in his expression that popped. Potts plays Hatter, who acts as Alice’s guide through Wonderland. Hatter is roguish, morally ambiguous, and completely and utterly charming. Hatter is the one character in Alice that undertakes a real transformation. At the beginning of the show Hatter is playing both sides, profiting from the Heart’s treachery but also supplying the resistance with food and supplies. As the film progresses his antics with Alice show him that there is a “better” way he could be living his life and he makes the conscience decision to become a better person. Potts display of emotion is phenomenal (illustrating just how void Scorsone was) and I have to admit he is quite the cutie (British and dimples, ‘nuff said). Watching him in Alice gave me cause to look him up and now I’m all about some Primeval (more sci-fi but I’ve been needing some light “monster of the week” action since the end of Buffy and Angel).

In all I think Alice is an interesting take on Alice and Wonderland but I’m not going to say it was amazing. It will, however, help take your mind off of a debilitating hangover.