Alex in Wonderland (1970)

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I'm very fond of films made from the late 1960s through the mid 1970s for their experimental attempts to get beyond genre conventions. I had fully expected "Alex in Wonderland" to be an overlooked psychedelic gem. While the film does have some amazing hallucinatory set-pieces (the most elaborate, a violent war in Hollywood with soldiers firing into a crowd while 2 men in top hats and tails dance on a flaming station wagon to the tune "Hooray for Hollywood"), most of the action is plodding. Donald Sutherland as Alex, goes off on many travels and tangents to entertain ideas for his next directorial effort. None of the episodic scenes build on each other and aside for gloriously lensed shots (by Laszló Kovács) of Sutherland in full hippie regalia walking introspectively in a variety of locations, there is little cumulative insight.

Fresh off of his breakout success Bob, Ted, Carol, and Alice, writer/ director Alex Mazursky made this close to the bone story of a hot new director caught up in a similar predicament. We never find out what Alex Morrison ( Donald Sutherland) settles on but this is the path Maz took and he went straight off the cliff.Sloppy, heavy handed and dull from the get go Alex in Wonderland embarrassingly stumbles along from its early tedious overlong scenes brazenly invoking Fellini along the way before actually hauling the maestro himself into a scene that is painful to watch. In between 8 1/2 references he also turns a chance meeting with Jeanne Moreau on Hollywood Boulevard into a crass Umbrellas of Cherbourg moment. Sutherland meanwhile with his liquid blue eyes reflecting in the California sun, his anti establishment hair blowing in the breeze looks dumbfounded in his tepid angst of struggling with confinement in a middle class gulag. As this unfolds Mazursky paints his backdrop with Alex's "wild" ideas, a heavy handed sloppy costume party complete with requisite dwarfs (one dressed like, you guessed it,Federico) as his nightmarish vision of Armegeddon.Ironically the best thing about Alex is Masurzky's performance as a millionaire wanting in on the movie business. Better the camera had followed him than this mediocre artist and his delusions of "far out" grandeur. As the counter culture version of 81/2 I would say it was off by 9.

It is so blatantly obvious that Mazursky is gently parodying the self righteousness of the hippie movement. When discussing the black uprising movie, it's the black dude who tells him it's a rotten idea. In a more stern observation, his wife is clearly upset and his family life is clearly hitting the skids and he goes on about an acid trip he and his friend took. His wife makes the incredibly accurate observation that he wants her to do what he wants her to do not what she wants to do.Look I fly a little to the left of the left wing but to blather on about Hollywood being left wing when they want nothing more than to do movies where "things blow up real good" is kind of ridiculous.The movie is good. It's not great. But it is a keen and well observed characterization of a creative man who is trying to keep his personal and creative life together and vibrant but falls prey to his own self doubts.

Does anything at all happen in this movie. There are only the bizarre short scenes where I didn't know what the hell was going on so that doesn't count. This movie is sooo boring it hurts, and this is coming from a person who likes it when movies are about making movies. Confused?, well I was after watching this crap. What was Donald Sutherland on, because he missed it with this one completely. And what's with the "pedofile" scene at the beginning of the movie. Can put anyone to sleep! 4/10