The Finest Movie to Ever Disgrace the Screens.
by Snap Bickerman
image via Wikimedia Public Domain
A tale of a girl on the cusp of adulthood being taken on an imaginary character-building journey in order to realize her own sexuality. Much of its story resembles the book, except, with some oddly placed and inexplicable exceptions. Not only, as you may imagine, is the plot contrived and overwhelmingly ridiculous, it also manages to be artlessly executed. The dialogue begins bare of substance and dry as a saltine cracker, unfailingly leading Alice from scene A to scene B using the straightest possible path. As the movie goes on, however, the fog of comedy clears for a scene or two and the interactions come through as unselfconscious and emotionally moving before returning to a pornagraphic carnival hosted by every jewish comedian who ever lived.
I did feel the flow of the film was quagmired in it’s lengthy sex scenes. Such as when two nurses perform a strip tease in front of humpty dumpty (who can’t get it up) and then proceeded to spend 2 minutes following the performers making out with each other on the grass in front of Alice and the Mad Hatter. Scenes like this demonstrate how the whimsical quality of the book is instead changed to a magic realism style, a loss of inhibition and willingness of the characters to accept the situation around them unquestioningly.
One of the charms of this film along with it’s attempt to maintain the same feel as the childhood classic, is catchy jingles like “We got his ding-a-ling up” in the case of humpty dumpty, is that it is full of unexpected creativity that just makes sense. Why has nobody thought of an 8-sided outdoor gazebo bed before? Like the man and woman both sporting short black curly hair making love to each other (tweedledum and twiddledee) in a scene where they invite Alice to watch them. The words “making love" in this case is not being used as euphemism. They are passionately engorging themselves on each other in what I find a distinctly disturbing way for a brother and sister, as they claim to be, to do. One might hear about this movie and think, “What an excellent movie to get stoned and watch!”. This incest is the first indication it’s not all fun and games, the sexual imagery only gets more intense from that point out in the movie.
The most remarkable quality about the film is that you feel convinced at one point that the maker of this film is absolutely taking the piss and at other times that he is being completely serious. There is even points where it is quite convincing in its sincerity as a commentary on continuous exposure to uncensored sex. The White Rabbit remarks in an offhand way to the mad hatter at one point, surrounded by an orgying court with some of the most candid images I have ever witnessed that, “After awhile it all seems the same, doesn’t it?”.
I am unsure about how to feel about this film. It makes me feel like a bipolar fey child, at once infatuated with a world where freedom of exploration is so natural and occasionally poignant and at the same time sickened by the how gruesomely vivid and unromanticized the images are and how stereotypically bland the interactions. At the best times it comes off like Mel Brooks attempting a pornography of literary origins, and at it’s worst it is a manic butchery of one of the most beloved classics in all of storytelling. This movie seems to defy the rules of its genre by ignoring expectation completely. It is not trying to be anything and therein lies its brilliance. Altogether this movie joins the ranks of oglaf web comics, the music video “Rub”, and Amy Sedaris's Strangers with Candy as part of the growing genre of post sexual comedy. That is comedy about sex which ignores the tensions and conventions of traditional views on sexuality. It, however, is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.
