UNLIMITED STREAMING
WITH PRIME VIDEO
TRY 30-DAY TRIAL
Home > Adventure >

Alice

Alice (1988)

August. 03,1988
|
7.4
| Adventure Fantasy Animation

A quiet young English girl named Alice finds herself in an alternate version of her own reality after chasing a white rabbit. She becomes surrounded by living inanimate objects and stuffed dead animals, and must find a way out of this nightmare- no matter how twisted or odd that way must be. A memorably bizarre screen version of Lewis Carroll’s novel ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’.

...

Watch Trailer

Cast

Similar titles

Reviews

Matrixston
1988/08/03

Wow! Such a good movie.

More
BallWubba
1988/08/04

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

More
BeSummers
1988/08/05

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

More
Ariella Broughton
1988/08/06

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

More
cassius da silva
1988/08/07

If you are a fan of random, loud, annoying noises and pictures; solely intended to be an eye/ear sore, then this is the film for you. I used to have very vivid, haunting, random dreams of shapes and noises when I was a child that used to haunt me at night. This film is very similar to those dreams.You would have to be another level of pretentious to give this film a positive rating, or refer to it as "art"It is nonsense for the sake of nonsense. The sole intention of this film is to wind people up. I think Jan Svankmajer did this film for a laugh to see what he could get away with, knowing full well that some so called "film critics" would still give it rave reviews, however skin crawlingly pointlessIf I could stop one person from watching this film with this review I feel that I would have made the world a slightly better placeThe only possible use for this movie would be for torture. This is far more psychologically harmful than waterboardingIt angers me that this film exists and the fact that it won an award makes me sick

More
Tanuccoon
1988/08/08

The original Alice in Wonderland story was a little odd but, within the context of a dream, ultimately excusable. The director/writer of the film must have found the story too ordinary, as he opts for a more bizarre and occasionally creepy re-imagining. The adaptation is pretty loose in relation to the original story and omits several major characters (most noticeably the Cheshire Cat, although he could have been invisible the whole time....) although many of the key plot points remain.However, the kicker is that most of the artistic elements aren't even all that memorable, let alone good. The best one is the rabbit coming to life in the beginning but then it's mostly so-so until a very creepy take on the tea party. Some is just weird for the sake of weird, which doesn't necessarily make for a good film.The worst part is that the film is fairly dull and the repeated effect of seeing Alice talk for the other characters gets annoying fast. As such, the film may be worth watching just to see how much of it you can stand before switching it off.

More
roie-263-895755
1988/08/09

I watched this as a kid, it was on channel 4 or something, DEAR GOD IT WAS DISTURBING. I can't believe people thought this was for children, I wouldn't let my children watch it. Although most children would probably find it boring, I actually quite liked it. But I am now having regular therapy sessions and I blame this entirely.... AND THE NIGHTMARES.JUST.WON'T.STOP..... The image of the white rabbit chattering it's teeth will be forever burned into my brain. CANNOT UNSEE!!!.... NOOOOOO!!!Anyway I have been searching for this for years, it's not very well known so was hard to find. I was curious to find out what it was called so that I could watch it again, I am a glutton for punishment. And I felt that I needed more therapy, I quite like being driven mad by bizarre and random images.Those teeth! NOOOOOO!!!

More
chuck-526
1988/08/10

My point of reference for Jan Svankmajer's "Alice" is Terry Gilliam's "Tideland" (Svankmajer in general and his "Alice" in particular are known to have significantly influenced Gilliam). Although the images in Svankmajer's "Alice" are definitely weirder, darker, and more disturbing than virtually any other "Alice" film, they're _not_ quite as weird, dark, and disturbing as the ones in Tideland. I at least never recoiled in shock or horror from the images in "Alice" ...although I strongly suspect that quite a few others will.The stop-motion animation is outstanding. Having a doll climb a ladder, then slide down some furniture and fall down on the floor, is something that I expected to look a little stagy with typical stop-motion animation. Instead having those images be totally believable -to the point of watching for bruises and sprained ankles- amazed me.The "sound effects" (foley) are trademark Svankmajer: hyper-realistic and quite detailed and very loud. The sound effects are virtually continuous for the entire film. We hear exactly what Alice hears; the sound track never switches to the next scene ahead of the images.One trope that's used throughout is extreme closeups of Alice's moving lips as she speaks or thinks. The effect _might_ be stunning with the original audio and subtitles--I simply don't know ...because that's not available. All that's available is an English dubbed soundtrack. (Although I watched a Netflix CD, even searches of YouTube and non-English searches via international eBay or Google turned up only one reference to a possible release of the original audio, a proposed Blu-Ray that appears not to have actually happened, at least not as of April 2011.) Although the dubbing English girl sounds about the right age and temperament, the English sounds simply don't match up with the moving lips images. This is very disconcerting, making the lips trope little more than an annoyance.Svankmajer's "Wonderland" is entirely interiors. While warped and not quite realistic, it's a recognizable combination of an abandoned barn and a tenement house ...pre WWII. I don't think anything really looks like that these days.Somehow what initially appeared to me to be just a series of discontinuous bizarre images cohered into a single film experience. I still can't explain why I remained engrossed or where the feeling of continuity came from or how I was left with a single overall emotional impression. But I was.

More