Starring Maggie Grace ("Lost," TAKEN) this is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland set in a strange version of the nightlife of modern day London. At least I hope it's supposed to be strange...
The story: a girl is hit by a cab and the cabbie, trying to avoid responsibility, ends up driving her around town. The girl is trying to remember who she is. In fact, she is the duaghter of a billionaire who had set a $10 million reward for her return. The cabbie then brings her to a mob boss as a birthday present so he can collect the reward. But by then she remembers -- she was running away because her father wanted to marry a man she didn't love and now she has to escape again, to save herself from the original accident, and to find someone else.
So was it good?
Not really. And by "not really" I don't mean that it's good but not really good, I mean that it just isn't good. Which isn't to say that it's awful, but there's a lot wrong with it. For the first half of the movie, Alice is wondering around without a memory so everything feels very directionless. I guess if you want to experience being lost and/or high and wondering around the London nightlife this movie might replicate that, but, um, why the hell would you want that? (And to be honest the second half of KIDS did that with Chloe Sevigny's character and did it in less time and better with a bigger impact). You do meet all these Alice in Wonderland inspired characters, but a lot of it feels forced. It's only at the end as we realize a few key things -- that the cabbie hit Alice intentionally and that Alice was running away from her father -- that things come into focus. And the ending is nice. Alice regains her memory and reunites with someone and it's a touching scene. Not that movies have that touching scene to them and it made me willing to forgive a lot...but it still wasn't enough to recommend a movie that feels pointless for 80 of 95 minutes.
There are a few other things that take away from it. First is the dutch angles. Now dutch angles are when the camera is tiled sideays a bit. They are used to help disorient the viewer and used occasionally for emphasis and be a great filmmaking tool. But this movie uses them all the time. In fact, it would be easier to count the number of times the camera is NOT at a weird tilt (my guess: seven). By the end of the first act, it made the whole thing feel ridiculous and when you have a movie with the strangeness of this movie, I'm not sure you want people thinking that the film is a joke.
The other problem is the story idea that Alice is running away from an arranged marriage, which is exactly what Tim Burton did in his version of Alice in Wonderland. So even that element, added from the original story, felt derivative.
*** AVOID ***
Recommend instead: I'd recommend the Scy-Fy mini-series version of Alice in Wonderland (reviewed earlier). Although that version also has it's problems, it's a little smarter and a much more interesting take.
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