'Alice' review

Don't be late for this very important remake

By Rebecca Swanner

Posted December 3, 2009

Special to Metromix

This isn’t your typical "Alice in Wonderland" story. Then again there aren’t very many “typical” Alice stories. In this strange tale, we follow the journey of a brunette Alice (Caterina Scorsone), a twentysomething martial arts teacher whose father mysteriously disappeared ten years ago. On the night of our introduction to this trippy version of Alice, her handsome new boyfriend Jack will be meeting her mother for the first time and while dinner with her goes well, Jack (Phillip Winchester) receives a text message that merely says “Run” and it sets off a chain of events that ends with Alice falling through the looking glass and into Wonderland.

All of Wonderland’s residents want to know whether this is the same girl who came to their land 150 years ago but all Alice wants to do is find her boyfriend and get out of their surreal world. But that’s not an easy task. Though she’s aided in her quest by the Mad Hatter (Andrew Lee Potts) and the White Knight (Matt Frewer), she’s also being hunted down by a ceramic rabbit-headed assassin hired by the Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates) for a ring Jack gave her before he left. As the story progresses, more and more mysteries will unfold.

The Buzz: Wonderland is very different this time around. Not only is it now a citified landscape with seductive casinos, but with its Agent Smith-like guards, dangerous creatures lurking in the woods and a resistance led by the Caterpillar (Harry Dean Stanton) against a Queen who violently seized power and is now controlling her subjects using potions made from emotions sucked from the humans they kidnap, it’s almost as if the worlds of the "The Matrix" and "Narnia" have been meshed together.

The Verdict: Though the story and the world have been altered to fit a more modern—or in Wonderland’s case, futuristic—time and contains more than a few similarities to TK’s Emmy award-winning Syfy film "Tin Man," there are many references pulled directly from the original tale, including a Jabberwocky that could have been plucked straight from Sir John Tenniel’s illustration, that will please Alice fans. Though we do think it was a strange choice to replace the Cheshire Cat, who usually guides Alice through the world, with the Mad Hatter. But in a world where the Queen’s goons are armed with guns, maybe it’s better to have something around that has opposable thumbs.

Did You Know? This is Willing’s second trip down the rabbit hole. He also directed the not-so successful 1999 version of "Alice in Wonderland" that starred Martin Short, Whoopi Goldberg and Christopher Lloyd. This retelling is much better.

"Alice" premieres Sunday, December 6, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Syfy.