Our second fantasy film of the year. Deb had read both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and appreciated the way the two books were consolidated (no one I’ve talked to has read the third installment, What Alice Found There). She loved the way the imagined world came to life and the tremendous attention to detail. And the world they created was brilliant, vibrant and full with zany characters. This type of movie requires the viewer to surrender their view of things and accept the world as they present it. And that’s sort of the point of Alice, as she challenges the rationale of her world after her experiences down the rabbit hole. Deb was able to see the movie the way it was meant to be seen, I wasn’t.
I’m already geared toward challenging things and so I have a hard time accepting the world that they presented. Why was caterpillar smoking, what was it smoking, why is it blue? I was wandering, twitching, comparing the images with and without the special glasses, wondering what significance each crazy critter may have had, if they were symbols for other things, or just being wacky. Unresolved questions distract me. Despite the vivid qualities of each scene, the film never caught my attention. I was constantly looking for historical references that may have inspired this or that, and the similarities between this story and the Wizard of Oz (written 35 years after the Alice books). Oddly, neither one of us had any comment about the 3-D element.
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