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10/08/2013

Alice in Wonderland (1999, TV movie) - Adults may want to locate the exit for this one

♥♥

A star-flashing poster for Nick Willing's star-studded TV movie, Alice in Wonderland


Adolescent Alice gets lost in her large garden and falls down a rabbit hole, encountering several incredible creatures.

 

Nick Willing's (Jason and the Argonauts (2000), TV movie) UK/German/US co-production of Lewis Carroll's (A Tangled Tale (1885)) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) is possibly a very successful children's movie, - but for an adult person, it is more like a two and a half hour desert walk. It is written by Peter Barnes (Breakout (1959))
Particularly the sequences with Miranda Richardson (Southland Tales (2006)) as the screaming queen are headache-inflicting. Among many other oddities is a long scene in which Gene Wilder (The Producers (1967)) is dressed as a turtle.
The effects are, - although the film won four Primetime Emmys for them, - uneven and often old-fashioned to look at now.
This version of Carroll's classic novels is a weird film that I don't really understand. I was attracted to it by its impressive ensemble cast, which also includes Peter Ustinov (Death on the Nile (1978)), Christopher Lloyd (InSight (2011)), Martin Short (Clifford (1994)), Ben Kingsley (Three Cards (2010)) and Whoopi Goldberg (Showboy (2002)), but they ultimately cannot pull up this stale adaptation.
Carroll's underlying story of performance anxiety is, however, still a great one, but perhaps we had better read the novel, especially if the alternative is to watch this film.
Alice is played by Tina Majorino (Veronica Mars (2014)), who subsequently left acting on screens for five years.

 

Related post:

 

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
 

 

Watch  a 13-minutes behind the scenes feature here


Cost: 21 mil. $

Box office: None (TV movie)

= Uncertain

[Alice in Wonderland premiered 28 February (NBC) and runs 129 minutes. Shooting took place in England and Los Angeles from August - October 1998. In the US the film reached 25.34 mil. viewers at its first airing, becoming the week's most-viewed item. It won 4/6 Primetime Emmy nominations. Willing returned with 2 episodes of Jason and the Argonauts (2000, miniseries). Majorino returned in Napoleon Dynamite (2004). 10,000+ Rotten Tomatoes users have given Alice in Wonderland a 3.6/5 average rating.]

 

What do you think of Alice in Wonderland?

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