Strange. I'm not getting "dark" from the trailers I've seen. Admittedly, they may have held back the truly grim stuff for airing, so as not to scare off viewers.
And, here, I daresay that we have a case of *critics* who don't read. If memory serves, the source material isn't exactly sunshine and roses. "If all the world's a stage and all the people merely players, who in bloody hell hired the director?" -- Charles L Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com From: keithbjohn...@comcast.net Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 07:01:29 +0000 Subject: [scifinoir2] USA Today not Big on SyFy's "Alice" Interesting, USA Today thinks the Alice reimagining is both too dark, and unimaginative. I was going to start having some doubts about it--don't know why, as I'm not a big follower of USA Today's critics--but then they dissed "Tin Man". The critic says it was too dark and not very good either. That makes me wonder know if "Alice" might be pretty good after all... ************************************************************************* Syfy's 'Alice': Through a looking glass, only very darkly By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY All told, it might be best to keep Syfy away from looking glasses and tornadoes. Last time Syfy decided a children's classic needed to be, in the network's words, "re-imagined," we got Tin Man, a bleak tweaking of The Wizard of Ozthat buried a simple, gentle story under an ugly universe-saving quest. Now we get Alice, which throws Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass adventures into the same revisionist blender and spews out something close to the same unappetizing gruel. Close, but not quite. What gives Alice a slight edge over its Ozian cousin is a less-heavy hand, a few brighter performances and a source better suited to a darkling outlook. Nor does it hurt that Alice, while still overextended, has two fewer hours than Tin Man. None might have been best, but less is more. Written and directed by Nick Willing (who also directed Tin Man), Alice turns Carroll's curious girl into Alice Hamilton (Caterina Scorsone), a 20-ish martial-arts expert with commitment issues and a father fixation. When her boyfriend (Philip Winchester) is kidnapped, Alice follows his assailants to Wonderland, landing in the not-completely-trustworthy hands of Hatter (Andrew-Lee Potts, Alice's best asset). This is the same Wonderland the first Alice found, but time – and, apparently, an ambitious building program – have imbued it with the arid post-apocalyptic air of which Syfy is so inordinately fond. And it's ruled by an even more evil queen (a disappointing, inexplicably English-accented Kathy Bates), who plies her compliant subjects with emotions she drains from kidnapped humans. For an hour or so, simple pleasures suffice, such as matching old characters to new and faces to names (Tim Curry, Colm Meaney, Harry Dean Stanton and Matt Frewer among them). And some of the literary translations are clever, led by Wonderland's adoption of flamingo-shaped flying scooters. But Alice soon bogs down in Willing's superimposed plot, with its shifting motives and dreary lectures. And while there are times Alice fends (or punches) for herself, too often Scorsone succumbs to a drab weepiness. Willing has recast Carroll's story as a heroine's journey to enlightenment, but it's tough to see what precisely Alice learns – unless the moral is "Dump the loser, and if he's really worth anything, he'll chase after you." So you're left with a woman whose main quest is unsuccessful, and a movie that's glum, long and devoid of any sense of wonder. That's two classic strikes, Syfy. For literature's sake, let that be enough. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail is faster and more secure than ever. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/hotmail_bl1/hotmail_bl1.aspx?ocid=PID23879::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-ww:WM_IMHM_1:092009
