Alice: complete miniseries
Dec. 13th, 2009 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreShort version: Totally in love with the first half, one problem with the mythology aside. Then the second half had this totally boring 45~ minutes in which I was forced to endure a painful love triangle and wallowing in Daddy Issues (Because no one can save the world without first being at peace with their fathers and their father’s presence/absence in their lives. Mothers? What mothers?)
Aaaaanyway. Alice doesn’t trust men ever since her father disappeared when she was 10, but now she has a boyfriend named Jack. When Jack gets kidnapped and dragged into and alley after giving her a ring, Alice goes after him and gets sucked into a mirror, and finds herself in Wonderland, where humans are enslaved to have their emotions sucked out of them. Alice escapes and eventually meets Hatter, who is secretly a member of the resistance against the evil Queen of Hearts.
The first half is awesomely entertaining and the show approaches Wonderland as if it were some huge gothic mansion Alice found herself in, which was totally awesome. Alice was fun and, if sometimes lacking in common sense, pretty good at getting herself out of scrapes and gave good “uhm, no” and “WTH?” faces. And Hatter rather resembled a human puppy and sometimes seemed to be trying to channel a more sanitary Captain Jack Sparrow, and looking very confused when he kept accidentally being chivalrous. Jack wasn’t particularly interesting, but better than he initially seemed. And there was also the hilarious Charlie, the sole surviving Knight (and Hatter and Jack so wanted to be knights when they grew up) the evil seductress Duchess (who I, uhm, may have actually liked more than Alice) and the assassin March Hare, who may have been the best thing in the whole show. And March Hare and his goons spent a long time chasing Hatter and Alice through the gothic Wonderland and I was having so much fun.
Despite the annoying “Wonderland used to be awesome when there was a kind in charge, and then there was a queen and it started sucking” theme. As we all know, only evil queens are allowed in 99.99% of SFF. And...the tail end seriously reinforces that theme.
And then, suddenly it all went away and Alice was spending all her time angsting over various men and all the action slowed to a crawl because it had to be all about the triangle (which made the rather endearing romantic plotline less endearing, and I mostly ended up feeling annoyed on Duchess’s behalf) and Alice’s abandonment issues regarding her father and how her life was apparently incomplete without paternal influence (though, unlike many others in fiction with absentee fathers, she never took it out on her mother). I, uhm, may have spent a lot of that mentally shipping Alice and Duchess off to The O.Z. to have adventures with D.G. and Az*. Hatter went too, and I allowed Jack along to make Duchess happy. The fun did come back, but the dull kept invading the fun parts.
So, half of it lived up to my expectations, and the other half…well, it didn’t totally fail in my requirements, but it didn’t live up to my expectations, either. But! Italian mobster March Hare chasing Alice and Hatter through Gothic Wonderland!
*Uhm…Tin Man was way better. And 10th Kingdom. And not scared of female authority figures, both good and evil. And Frank Beddor made Wonderland a Queendom so there.
Aaaaanyway. Alice doesn’t trust men ever since her father disappeared when she was 10, but now she has a boyfriend named Jack. When Jack gets kidnapped and dragged into and alley after giving her a ring, Alice goes after him and gets sucked into a mirror, and finds herself in Wonderland, where humans are enslaved to have their emotions sucked out of them. Alice escapes and eventually meets Hatter, who is secretly a member of the resistance against the evil Queen of Hearts.
The first half is awesomely entertaining and the show approaches Wonderland as if it were some huge gothic mansion Alice found herself in, which was totally awesome. Alice was fun and, if sometimes lacking in common sense, pretty good at getting herself out of scrapes and gave good “uhm, no” and “WTH?” faces. And Hatter rather resembled a human puppy and sometimes seemed to be trying to channel a more sanitary Captain Jack Sparrow, and looking very confused when he kept accidentally being chivalrous. Jack wasn’t particularly interesting, but better than he initially seemed. And there was also the hilarious Charlie, the sole surviving Knight (and Hatter and Jack so wanted to be knights when they grew up) the evil seductress Duchess (who I, uhm, may have actually liked more than Alice) and the assassin March Hare, who may have been the best thing in the whole show. And March Hare and his goons spent a long time chasing Hatter and Alice through the gothic Wonderland and I was having so much fun.
Despite the annoying “Wonderland used to be awesome when there was a kind in charge, and then there was a queen and it started sucking” theme. As we all know, only evil queens are allowed in 99.99% of SFF. And...the tail end seriously reinforces that theme.
And then, suddenly it all went away and Alice was spending all her time angsting over various men and all the action slowed to a crawl because it had to be all about the triangle (which made the rather endearing romantic plotline less endearing, and I mostly ended up feeling annoyed on Duchess’s behalf) and Alice’s abandonment issues regarding her father and how her life was apparently incomplete without paternal influence (though, unlike many others in fiction with absentee fathers, she never took it out on her mother). I, uhm, may have spent a lot of that mentally shipping Alice and Duchess off to The O.Z. to have adventures with D.G. and Az*. Hatter went too, and I allowed Jack along to make Duchess happy. The fun did come back, but the dull kept invading the fun parts.
So, half of it lived up to my expectations, and the other half…well, it didn’t totally fail in my requirements, but it didn’t live up to my expectations, either. But! Italian mobster March Hare chasing Alice and Hatter through Gothic Wonderland!
*Uhm…Tin Man was way better. And 10th Kingdom. And not scared of female authority figures, both good and evil. And Frank Beddor made Wonderland a Queendom so there.