ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made
Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.
johnstonjames wow. brilliant. definitely love this adaptation. not only is it very faithful to Carroll's original text, but it's wildly inspired and very hipster funny. not to mention Kate Beckinsale is outstanding and a very natural Alice.everybody always does 'Wonderland' and throws in elements of 'Looking Glass', there have been very few versions of a true 'Looking Glass' adapted. there was the excellent TV special with Judi Rollin's and the Smothers Twins, but that wasn't very faithful to the story. i mean it had the wicked witch from 'Hansel and Gretel' in it. there was a cartoon with Janet(judy jetson)Waldo and Mr.T. i think the casting in that speaks for itself.this version of 'Looking Glass' is not only very faithful, it actually goes as far as to include the poem of 'The Wasp and the Wig' which Carroll wrote, but edited out of his original version.this also has one of the funniest recitations of 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' i have ever seen or heard.with everything about this version being so absolutely perfect, i think it's really notable that one of the very best things about it is Kate Beckinsale's Alice. her interpretation is outstanding. one of the very best and most personalized. I've never seen a 'Alice' film or entertainment i didn't like (easy to please i guess), and one of the strangest mystique about the 'Alice' films, i believe, is that even when the adaptations can have some flaws or short comings ( the Steve Allen version for instance), the actresses that play Alice are always excellent casting. from Henry, Marsh, to Rollins, Fullerton and Gregory, ALL the Alices i have seen have been just perfect. and Kate Becinsale is no exception. Beckinsale is not "practically perfect". she's perfect.this is a interesting approach too. whereas sometimes Alice is played by a older actress playing a little girl, the 'Alice' here is actually Alice's mother imagining herself in the little girl's adventure. the approach is inspired and unique and it works beautifully. as a adult, i really relate to Beckinsale's Alice most of all sometimes, because she is actually a adult reflecting upon childhood. as a adult who loves this story, i can really relate to this approach profoundly. i especially love the closing moment when Beckinsale's mother looks back at the mirror with a confused, somewhat disturbed and reflective look on her face. i love the book, but let's face it, it's somewhat of a enigma and confounding.purist will probably quibble with this version, like they do with most every version, since supposedly 'Alice' is un-filmable. supposedly. they really shouldn't. i mean what other version would be knowledgeable enough to give us the 'Wasp and the Wig'.enough is enough concerning 'Alice'. i think it's time to give credit to the wondrous legacy of imagination this great story has inspired in entertainment. i feel sorry for those quibbling purist. they don't know what they're missing. i've loved all the versions, i even enjoyed the lackluster Tim Burton dud ( i mean Depp was just terrific).'Wonderland' is one of my favorite places to escape to, and this version is great fun. it's intellectualized, lofty and cerebral, without being at all pretentious. it's just the opposite. it's funny and fanciful.
tedg In 1871, A deacon logician at Oxford published a sequel to his surprisingly popular children's story. In that original, he had dabbled in the mix of logic and mysticism that he thought respectable. Fortunately for him, it was characterized as the sort of nonsense genre created by Edward Lear. But he was deeply disturbed in the years that followed as the Church and what came to be called spiritualism diverged. So to make amends to his God, and to deflate the Kabbalistic origin of the first work, he formulated something with much the same structure and tone, but without the magic.This work was based on conundrums created by the symmetries in the world. It became as popular as the first. His later works tried harder to distance himself from divination and became tepid Christian allegories. "Through the Looking-glass" was so successful that it and the original Alice are often merged as if they were seamless. The symmetries in the later work are easier to quote, so the looking-glass symbology and structure is re-used and quoted far more than the dangerous and slippery original Alice.In 1979, auteur Raoul Ruiz made "The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting," a remarkable film, using the Alice structure as a template for narrative folding and a painting as the conflation of both book and mirror.Based on this, cinematic novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, wrote a rather complex and ambitious novel. "The Flanders " published in 1990. In 1994, filmmaker Jim McBride continued on of his two film careers, the one where he starts with extremely ambitious material, making a mainstream film based on Pérez-Reverte's novel. While the novel was inherently cinematic, McBride added an extra dimension: the folds of inner narrative, of dreams and fantasies were mapped onto the body of the on screen detective, with insight conflated with nudity. To accomplish this insofar as he could, he found a quite beautiful and intuitively talented young actress. Like Nastassja Kinski and Asia Argento before her, she grew up in an acting family and genuinely knew how to map narrative on her body, unafraid to be as sexually complex as possible. Together, Kate Beckinsale and McBride made an interesting if not profoundly successful film.Like Kinski and Jovovich, Beckinsale would go on to make films directed by lovers, films that would shamelessly exploit this talent. But in between her First Alice and her leathered vampire phase, she was Alice in a literal film version of the book. Well, it is not quite literal in that we have to explain why a redheaded sexual being is in this looking-glass world, and plot accommodations are made based on the Pérez-Reverte model.This film is a disaster, an utter disaster if you take it as it comes. It has none of the magic of the book, though the language and images are used exactly. It has none of engagement that other experiments have with whatever mix of mystery and sex they use. And though it experiments with cinematic inner visions, the devices used are from Terry Gilliam and all utterly fail.But if you see it in this greater context of Kate's mother, the Lewis Carroll cover-up and deliberately obfuscated magic; if you see it as overtly sexual but with the sex completely hidden: homeopathic seduction, then it works amazingly well. Alice as a redhead!Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
kitkuri A. The Jabberwock was terribly translated to screen. Granted none of it followed Tenniel, but the Jabberwock was poorly done and could have been scarier if it were somewhat like in the book.B. I was looking forward to a Lion and the Unicorn scene to make up for what the show lacked and was disappointed to see just a brief mention of it on a newspaper page. Instead they made up for the time to do the Wasp. To give some background on the Wasp for those that have seen it and don't understand, Tenniel gave his advice to Carroll to ditch that entire part. Tenniel couldn't translate him into a picture and said it was a waste of time. Though it is in a very old issue of The Smithsonian.So why did they replace the best part of Alice with that?Overall, I'm disappointed and though, yes, the colors and the scenery and even the film variations were well done, it was a terrible translation.
alice liddell Without infringing on the IMDb guidelines, can I just suggest that this film is a disappointing visualisation of the greatest book ever written? Lewis Carroll's masterpiece is too mercurial to depict - taken out of its literary context, its ideas, incidents and characters simply don't make sense. Its humour and traumas are literary and philosophical. The filmmakers fail to adapt forms, instead relying on swathes of dialogue.Different film styles are used to try and disrupt normality, a la Carroll, but the incoherent script, uncertain acting and muffled diction only grate. There is no sense of narrative momentum (even if only to be subverted), and targets are missed because it is unclear what they are. Changing the book's view from that of a child to a woman renders the whole exercise redundant. Graver still is the unwillingness to trust the audience - the dream/reality ambiguity, crucial to the book's meaning, is too clearcut. The colours and set design can be extremely beautiful though.
