reviewed by Charity Bishop
     

The SyFy Channel is not known for its immensely good acting but it does seem to have a niche in the genre and this time around Alice, a loose adaptation of a "sequel" to the children's story, has taken on a new and imaginative slant.

Alice (Caterina Scorsone) has a perfectly respectable life as a black belt karate instructor but in the back of her mind she is still the frightened ten year old child whose dad simply vanished one day. Her preoccupation with finding out what happened to him is put on temporary hold due to her romance with Jack Chase (Philip Winchester), a handsome businessman who seems interested in asking her to marry him. But when he hands her a box with a family heirloom ring in it and asks her to come with him suddenly to meet his parents, Alice slams on the brakes. She simply is not ready for this -- so out the door he goes, leaving the ring inconspicuously in her pocket. Intending to return it to him, Alice runs out into the street just in time to see Jack overpowered by thugs and dragged through a looking glass. When she leaps in after them, suddenly she is falling down a long, winding, colorful hole until she comes to a gentle thud at the bottom. Lost in a strange and mysterious new world, she runs into Hatter (Andrew Lee Potts), a well-meaning and charming but often unscrupulous thug who is part of the resistance.

Wonderland has been taken over by the vengeful Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates), who is harvesting the positive emotions of humans from the other side of the looking glass  in order to make inexpensive "drugs" for her subjects. From Innocence to Wonder, all emotions pack a powerful punch and they have been making people disappear for years. Alice merely wants to rescue Jack and go home, but Hatter and his associates have other ideas for her, and when the Queen discovers her presence, she sets her mightiest assassin on Alice's trail. A showdown is inevitable and all Alice has on her side is intuition, a bit of luck, and a crazy knight (Matt Frewer).

I must admit that portions of Alice are too strange for even my odd tastes but overall the plot is engaging, the acting is surprisingly good (especially from Scorsone), they have a decent cast, and the special effects are only occasionally bad. It was fun to see them introduce different aspects of the original into the sequel without making carbon copies. All our favorite original characters are here, just in different form. The "Caterpillar" is in fact a member of the underground resistance, just as Hatter turns out to be a cute guy in his thirties. The costume design is unusual but interesting and I think my favorite aspect in that regard were the queen's guards, who do remind one of playing cards just with a more practical twist. Their little Club-shaped hats are fun, as is Alice's blue dress paired with red tights. Some of it is predictable and it borrows somewhat from the widely popular 10th Kingdom miniseries, but I liked it much more than I expected to.

There is not much to be concerned about in the content. Alice wears a short dress throughout and a Duchess is often shown in revealing clothing. There is some mild sensuality between a man and a woman that never progresses beyond demure flirtations. I don't remember any language but there are a handful of mild abuses of deity. Violence is not prevalent but does include martial arts fight sequences and exchanges of gunfire, in which several people are shot and killed. Assassins hunt down Alice and her companions and shoot at them, causing their flying machines to plummet into a lake. A giant monster chases them into a pit, where it briefly impales itself on one of the spikes before pulling free and ambling away. The Queen is always ordering beheadings but we never witness any of them.

I will say that toward the end of the production, the script falls a little flat. It makes sense given the situation and their experiences but I was expecting more from the showdown between Alice and the Queen. And there is an incredibly stupid plot twist involving the white knight that should have been left on the cutting room floor... but it has some quirky humor, a guest appearance from a villainous Tim Curry, and a terrific ending. Again, I saw it coming but it didn't bring any less of a smile to my face. If you enjoy classic fairy tales with a bit of a sci-fi twist, you will enjoy coming to know the spunky and determined Alice.