Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland
felice
I thought it was a lot of fun, though if I'd been expecting something
remotely in the spirit of the Lewis Carroll books I'd have been very
disappointed. This film is a very generic, by-the-numbers heroic fantasy
with a superficial coating of Wonderland imagery. I mean seriously, the
Mad Hatter as love interest??? Fortunately, I like heroic fantasies, and
there are very few of them where the girl gets to slay the dragon. Plus,
it's a very pretty film and it passes the Bechdel Test.
There were some rather odd elements to the script, eg Alice has
apparently been dreaming of her previous visit to Wonderland every night
for the last 13 years, but doesn't seem to remember any of it when she
returns. This is actually commented on by other characters in the film,
but if there was any explanation or even reason for it, I missed it. And
apparently the place is actually named Underland, and I'm not sure why
that's not reflected in the film's title - the differentiation from the
(loose) inspiration would have been sensible.
I was pleased by Alice's decision to ignore the demands of the prophecy
(I wasn't kidding about it being generic fantasy) and do what she
thought was right, but that went nowhere (try Un Lun Dun by China
Mieville if you like the idea of subverting prophecies). And her
decision to return to the mundane world at the end was mindnumbingly
predictable - can't we just once have a film where the protagonist
chooses to stay in the amazing magical realm instead of feeling
compelled to go back to ordinary life?
But despite the flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and thought Alice was a
great heroine. Recommended if you're in the mood for some light escapism.
Anyone else been to the movies recently?
felice
cinematic shoes
--
-----------------------------
ASLM is a moderated newsgroup.
Our webpage is at http://www.shoelesbians.com
The archive is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aslm_archive/
Post directly to alt-shoe-lesb...@moderators.isc.org
Questions? Contact the mods at aslm+r...@panix.com
--