Search - Malice in Wonderland on DVD

With 'Malice' Aforethought...

4-Legged Defender | ATL. GA. | 08/02/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I got a screener copy of this dvd and expected it to be a total dud, cashing in on the success of Tim Burton's 'Alice', but was more than surprised when I sat down to view it. I told my wife, "Don't expect much", and she concurred but, in truth, we both enjoyed it for what it was.

Instead of being loosely adapted by the Lewis Carroll tale, it was almost a literal translation of the story, except all the characters were rewritten to fit into today's seedy British underworld of lowlife gangsters, drug lords, addicts and pimps, as seen through the eyes of Terry Gilliam.

Alice (Maggie Grace) is an American law student in London, whose parents are insanely wealthy. Struck down by a cab operated by Whitey (the White Rabbit, excellently portrayed by Danny Dyer), she awakens with amnesia in Wonderland, a world that's a million miles from home.

We follow her various escapades as she is dragged through an underworld filled with twisted individuals and some of the lowest forms of human life imaginable by the enigmatic Whitey, who speaks in perverse rhyme with a crazed cockney accent. Alice desperately needs to regain her senses, which isn't easy when she's repeatedly drugged, remember who she is, where she's from, and figure out a way back while she's still in one piece.

A quick tempo aids this flick from dragging, surrealistic neon landscapes and absurd characters and camera angles keep our interest, and a logical but predictable ending closes this illogical lunacy.

3 ½ stars for the flick, rounded up to 4 stars simply because it was a hell of a lot better than I expected, with `Malice' aforethought.
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