As with the first movie, this is clearly “Meh-” material: as Mark Kermode put it I think, it passes the time until Indy 4 well enough. But as with the first movie, it must be said that it’s mostly a good “meh-”. It’s bookended by a build-up and finale that are almost identikit copies of their original counterparts (“it’s a little gold man …” anyone?) but it has its moments like a chase down the tiny backstreets of London, a foray into Buckingham Palace, a nice scene around Paris’ Statue of Liberty (which reminded me I really must remember to see that next time I go).

It’s a Bruckheimer movie, so you should expect plausibility to go entirely out of the window, and that it certainly does around the point where Nicolas Cage manages to kidnap a President who seems almost willing to be kidnapped – even that’s a fun sequence, though, I’ve gotta admit. Likewise the stuff with Helen Mirren and Jon Voight as “mom and dad” feel often hideously like pandering to the older audience, but, y’know, it’s Mirren and Voight, it’s hard to complain. If you don’t watch movies often then it’s the last thing you want to waste your time on; otherwise, knock yourself out.

I’ve gotta say, this really impressed me. I’ve been terrible about keeping up with my reviews this past week and it reached the point on this one that I was thinking for the first half hour how ever I was going to come up with something to say about it, so little did I expect to enjoy it. I knew the basic story that it’s based on – that a bank robbery took an unexpected turn when the robbers came across compromising photographs of a Royal – and due to my prejudice against Jason Statham I really didn’t hold out a lot of hope for coming out of the movie much wiser.

Sure enough, at the 30 minute mark they are breaking into said bank – but it’s there that I began to notice one of the film’s biggest strengths. Though it felt like quite a meandering set-up to that “finally in the bank” moment, once there, it’s surprising how fast they seem to have got there and how fast things begin to happen that are at once unexpected and occasionally quite nasty. The screenplay is pure, no nonsense, procedural heist material but I feel like it does “the guilty” as they are called in the end credits “justice” for want of a better word. The Statham factor slips ever so slightly in an action sequence towards the end (I think him kicking a brick out of a wall to throw at someone was where I drew the line) but he’s actually mostly okay here. The look and feel is more timeless than perfect period recreation like “American Gangster” and the like, but it works. It’s a movie I’ll watch again for sure.

Maybe I’m just desperately continuing a theme here after last weekend, but I found something similar in The Tracey Fragments to the whole Alice thing. I only really began to realise another side to “Alice in Wonderland” last week when somebody was talking about how old the Disney movie is now and how wild it must’ve seemed at the time of its release considering even now, in the wacky world in which we live, it’s still pretty wacky. I said, it’s true, in a world where we never quite know what’s going to explode next, where we never quite seem to be able to do the right thing, we kind of live in Wonderland now, and our response to Carroll’s creation is sort of doomed to be jaded – you can pause for a moment with all the technology, information and possibility around you and almost go mad; so it’s better to be, well, a little numb to it.

For teenagers, of course, it’s always been this way. So many options. Right and wrong. Good or bad. Cool or not. Even their bodies are betraying them inside and out. One could argue that the fragmented images on the screen here are like a broken looking-glass, the cinema screen often called a mirror to the audience; that the varying sizes of images on the screen are like Alice’s changes in size. Tracey has parents, teachers, school peers and even a psychotherapist – people who are meant to help her cope in this wonderland, yet like all Alice’s acquaintances, none of them do squat for her. In the end, it’s she who has to find out herself, how “No one can stop me,” she says at the end; “No one can make me stand still.” She kinda becomes a superhero in that moment – it reminded me of the, “Why aren’t my hands shaking?” scene in The Brave One.

Like Sofia Coppola’s films outside of The Virgin Suicides, it’s probably a film whose success in portraying the very adolescent nature of adolescence is actually its biggest problem. The fragmented screen gimmick seems like just that at first but in the end it’s used cleverly enough to make it not just a gimmick – at times it captures stuff the way I always believe cinema should capture stuff better than any other format could … it’s the ultimate extension of what’s grown from split-screen to Mike Figgis’ Timecode to TV’s 24 etc, etc. But ultimately its success is in portraying the adolescent state of mind … and I just don’t know how fun a thing that is to spend even the movie’s admirable 80-minute runtime with. I discovered while reading about the movie online that all the shot footage for the movie was actually released via BitTorrent last year for people to make their own creations with it. It might be quite the amazing DVD when it emerges. So many possibilities. Like another review I read recently said, maybe someone will crack the code and make this as good a movie as it deserves to be.

Ugh, this is just one of those movies about which there is almost literally nothing to write. I listened for the first time to the Hollywood Saloon podcast last weekend (definitely recommended on the basis of just one episode) and they spoke at length about Roland Emmerich. I actually don’t have a great prejudice or bias for or against the guy really – Independence Day is fantastic, The Day After Tomorrow has its moments, Godzilla is great cheese and I found The Patriot very impressive coming from that same team (though, it’s interesting to note, like the Hollywood Saloon guys, I’m pushed to really remember much of that movie, lol).

So the problem I had coming to this movie was not Emmerich. The problem to me was – who really thought anybody actually wanted to see this thing? It’s just … nothing! We have seen all the visuals this movie has to offer many times before, often even better. I find the sabretooth tiger here no more lifelike than Aslan in the BBC’s adaptation of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” 20 years ago let alone the more recent bigscreen version. The story is absolutely non-existent, purely an excuse for those visuals. My mind just boggles at why anybody felt this was worthy of the time, effort and money it takes to put a big budget movie together. It’s just appallingly useless.

“Scott, I seem to have wet my pants.”

What can be said about one of the new strain of generic Will Ferrell comedies? I truly thought that this would be the one where I broke and finally found him not only unfunny but intolerably lazy, but in the end it just works and I was laughing my head off just about every time I chose to dip in (that’s right, it’s the kind of movie that makes perfect background to just about anything).

Both Jon Heder and Will Ferrell do just about the exact thing they’ve done before but somehow they get away with it yet again. I thought Heder was surprisingly good in School for Scoundrels and his Napoleon Dynamite voice was perfect for his character in Surf’s Up too – here, for the first half-hour I found it a little niggling but ultimately it’s the visual humour that takes over – I think when Heder slides across a room belly down on ice is where I finally caved in and stopped looking for problems. But I do hope he does something a little different after this, if he’s even able.

The ending (which I won’t even begin to describe except it bears a resemblance to that ending to Grease I’ve always hated) actually almost places it instantaneously into my special cheesy faves collection – it’s certainly a possible destiny for the movie if I watch it again. For now, even hours after watching it I can’t really remember exactly why I was laughing so much and so frequently – it’s a very disposable movie – but I do know I liked it.

Last Alice movie for now, lol, I promise – normal service will resume soon. Oh and I did watch this yesterday – well, early this morning – I just, y’know, had to sleep eventually Most of this was written while watching anyway.

I was worried at first here because I have an horrendously dubbed version of this perhaps the creepiest of all Alice adaptations. Luckily, it’s really more about the images and sound effects than anything, the dialogue being mostly either sparse or redundant (I’d say at least 50% of it consists of “said the rabbit” lol which in the end becomes very annoying) – which makes the very first line, “this is a film for children. But remember to shut your eyes, or else you won’t see anything!” deliciously ironic in addition to being a fine warning for those of a sensitive disposition (I’ll just say it was probably unwise of me to add this to the schedule at the last minute as the last thing I watch before bedtime at 4 in the morning, lol – I’m writing this while watching because I’m sure in the morning I’ll either plainly think I dreamt it or will have merged it inseparably with whatever nightmares I might have after a full afternoon and evening of Alice …)

In short, it’s “Alice: The WTF Edition” – the images are so arresting and nightmarish that you genuinely can’t take your eyes off them; the sound and pace so visceral that you genuinely fear for the actress in the lead, for example when the mouse (actually it’s more like a rat here) in the pool of tears sets up camp on her head thinking it’s an island, hammering sticks into her scalp, her only protest “That’s too far!” coming as he tries to set fire to her hair. Perhaps surprisingly given the wacky means by which it’s done, the movie actually stays pretty close to the story – which makes it even more amazing that it feels so unpredictable compared to other adaptations. Each time, for example, that Alice breaks into one of the tiny desks that litter her journey, I found myself seriously not knowing what might come out of it or where she might be taken next or what might happen to her. It somehow lulls you into a state of anxiety, something that’s perfectly understandable when it comes to Alice but that none of the other adaptations really do so well as this one.

At 90 minutes the jerky motion and incessant sound effects certainly start to grate towards the end – I’ve a feeling this might be something that’s not so bad in the original Czech language version with the truly horrible dubbing girl’s voice taken away … in any case, it’s still another great interpretation of the story that’s worth watching if you like seeing things you’ve never seen before.

As expected, though I’m certain I’ve seen this before, when I was way too young to appreciate it (we’re possibly even talking single digits, I think my grandma saw it was about Alice or something and put it on, lol, god bless her), this viewing, with all I know now that I didn’t know then, was far more rewarding. Considering even without that knowledge for most of my life it’s managed to haunt me all these years anyway, and I’ve long intended to watch it again, I think that alone speaks of how stunning a film it really is.

I guess there are three ways you could come to this movie that will profoundly affect the way you take it. Some will know the Alice story but nothing of its author, particularly of his attraction to little girls including Alice Liddell for whom he wrote it. Some will know the whole thing, and of that set of people there will be those who find the relationship between Dodgson/Carroll and Alice unsettling and those who find it as wonderful as wonderland itself.

If you’re in the first set, the movie will almost immediately come as a shock and it’s probably simply best to not recommend it – even if under normal circumstances the idea of a “relationship” developing between a young girl and a man who isn’t family doesn’t strike you as fearfully odd, the juxtaposition of that concept with one of the best-loved children’s stories, not to mention Ian Holm’s admittedly strange performance as Carroll, will probably be enough to tip you over.

If you’re of the second variety, and you long for the movie that “finally” depicts Carroll as the monster he “really was”, then for a while here you might think you’ve discovered the Holy Grail. Like I say, Ian Holm’s performance is very strange. He plays Carroll almost like the android in Alien, or more recently his character in From Hell – he gazes at Alice with seemingly empty eyes and he’s just not the kindly soul you’d ever expect to be so great with the little ones. For a good half hour at the start here I was cringing, thinking perhaps my memory of the movie wasn’t so hot afterall and I was about to witness just about the worst end to my “Alice” day imaginable, lol.

It amazes/saddens me that there’s a message on the movie’s IMDb message board that seems to paint our age in some way superior to the mid-Eighties in which this was produced because, if it were made today, Carroll would be painted as a paedophile monster simple and true. “In 1985,” they write, “you couldn’t do such things without getting into trouble.” Like, wow. Just wow. I’ve dreamt my whole life of the day when we all just saw the worst in things. No – they’ve got it the wrong way around – you couldn’t do this movie today without getting in trouble, that’s the sad thing. (It’s encouraging to note some of the other responses in that thread, though.) (Okay, I’ll admit: there’s Finding Neverland which does kind of address JM Barrie’s thing for little boys without ever going tabloid … but it’s somehow not the same …)

Anyway, consider me one who’s firmly in the latter set. And I’ve got to say, after that first half hour of fearing the worst about Holm’s portrayal of Carroll, etc, I really began to appreciate the obstacles the film makers had clearly thrown in their own way to their objective in the production. Nevermind “warts and all” here, both Carroll in Alice’s memory and Alice herself as an 80-year-old woman in New York are painted almost as nothing but warts at the start. And just as Carroll is seen through Alice’s eyes, writer Dennis Potter brings another character to New York with her, a young orphan called Lucy who seems to be in a wonderland of her own. We see the strangely cold and domineering Alice through her, as well as her interactions with the American entertainment industries.

Alice is first averse to “playing up” her history as “the real Alice” for the American press but this shifts when one reporter reveals she could make money from it. In these scenes we always see Lucy backed away not quite understanding how the Alice who demands the best of manners and etiquette from her and others seems to shift into this almost monstrous way of interacting with the strange world of dollars and cents etc. But like Alice in Wonderland declaring to the royal court, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” Lucy too eventually stands up for herself, telling Alice in the diner to, “Shut up, shut up,” and finally ends up romantically involved with the reporter. It’s an incredibly clever subplot.

Coral Browne is incredible as the elderly Alice. There’s a moment right at the start when the main reporter first invokes the name “Dreamchild” to her and you feel the memories beginning to flood back to her over her face, at once joyous yet painful and unwanted. On occasion she almost looks directly into the audience’s eyes, even at one point saying something about feeling as though someone walked over her grave begging the question, is that us, watching this fictionalized version of her? At another stage she comments to the reporter about, “that strange feeling, like what you’re about to say has already been said before …” The movie just connects in such a way on so many levels that are usually left untouched by even the best of films.

As the younger Alice in flashbacks, Amelia Shankley is equally astonishing. The first thing that struck me is how much she actually resembles the real Alice as photographed by Carroll – but the performance soon displaces that purely aesthetic response to her. I wasn’t impressed by her in the Cannon Movie Tales Red Riding Hood which came later, but this is one of the best young performances I’ve seen – and considering the character, that’s particularly important.

The Jim Henson Creature Shop provided puppets for the segments where Alice (sometimes old, sometimes young) re-encounters her old acquaintances from Wonderland such as the Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse, and crucially the Caterpillar (“You are old, Mrs. Hargreaves …”) They’re most certainly not the wacky, comic versions you’ll find in most other adaptations – think more Meet the Feebles than the Muppets. The Mad Hatter looks like he has a skin disease, the March Hare like his teeth are rotting. It’s another obstacle to us and Alice understanding the love that was behind all this.

It’s a miracle, then, how in the end (for me at least: I would hope though that the same is true for a least some in the first and second sets of viewers described earlier) it all works in favour of stuffy old Alice and creepy old Dodgson. The final scenes, again, have Coral Browne almost looking directly into our eyes, quizzically, as if to say, “What do you think?” as she finds herself experiencing her most important memory – the camera cuts by a 180 angle to show that she’s looking at Dodgson on a day when she and her sisters (and her husband to be, Reginald Hargreaves) humiliated him. We see the young Alice almost immediately regret her laughter and moving over to Dodgson, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek. It’s just love, that’s all, the movie seems to say. And quite ingeniously and beautifully it says it too.

“The me I never knew
Begin to stir sometime this morning;
The me I never knew
Appeared without a word of warning.”

I’d forgotten entirely how this version, too, replicates that “golden afternoon” feeling at the start so well, also that it begins in such a fashion in a framing device of “Mr. Dodgson” (Lewis Carroll) telling the three Liddell sisters the story. All bonus points in my book.

What I always remember about the movie are the songs, John Barry’s score, and Fiona Fullerton, who is absolutely beautiful in the central role – I don’t care what people say about her being too old for it, she’s young enough in spirit and appearance for me. The visual effects, it bears repeating from below, I still find absolutely stunning. The slow shrinking over “Curiouser and Curiouser”, ending with the trackback to reveal the pool of tears, is simply perfect, as is the later growing in the White Rabbit’s house.

It’s certainly still my favourite adaptation (so far). It also has the benefit (I think – as I’ve said in other Alice reviews today I only discovered this past week) of being one of the few to focus solely on the first book (hence the title, presumably).

September 8th, 2005:

This movie has a beautiful look to it, the kind they simply don’t do anymore, all foggy and mysterious like The Water Babies, not slick and perfect like today’s fantasy adventures. There’s some great music by John Barry (slightly dodgy lyrics by Don Black though) and an enchanting performance by then 16-year-old Fiona Fullerton as Alice. What’s most wonderful about the whole thing is its infectious innocence. The cast is packed with stars, from Peter Sellers to Spike Milligan and Michael Crawford, if you can recognise them under all the make-up. The effects are flawless, too. For a 90 minute movie, it tires towards the end, but overall it’s a fairly fantastic adaptation.