Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

LincyTy This sounds cruel but this movie is by far the worst movie I have ever seen. It was a hell to get through the whole movie. Multiple times we wanted to switch it of, but for a strange reason we kept watching till the end. Not that the movie got any better at all...It might be because I have never read the book, but I found the story quite confusing. I didn't understand why Alice is played by Kate Beckingsale. If I'm correct I thought Alice was still a child... maybe I didn't pay enough attention because it was hard to keep watching it. Never ever am I going to see this movie again!! So if I were you take another movie, you won't regret that choice.

tedg In 1871, A deacon logician at Oxford published a sequel to his surprisingly popular children's story. In that original, he had dabbled in the mix of logic and mysticism that he thought respectable. Fortunately for him, it was characterized as the sort of nonsense genre created by Edward Lear. But he was deeply disturbed in the years that followed as the Church and what came to be called spiritualism diverged. So to make amends to his God, and to deflate the Kabbalistic origin of the first work, he formulated something with much the same structure and tone, but without the magic.This work was based on conundrums created by the symmetries in the world. It became as popular as the first. His later works tried harder to distance himself from divination and became tepid Christian allegories. "Through the Looking-glass" was so successful that it and the original Alice are often merged as if they were seamless. The symmetries in the later work are easier to quote, so the looking-glass symbology and structure is re-used and quoted far more than the dangerous and slippery original Alice.In 1979, auteur Raoul Ruiz made "The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting," a remarkable film, using the Alice structure as a template for narrative folding and a painting as the conflation of both book and mirror.Based on this, cinematic novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, wrote a rather complex and ambitious novel. "The Flanders Panel" published in 1990. In 1994, filmmaker Jim McBride continued on of his two film careers, the one where he starts with extremely ambitious material, making a mainstream film based on Pérez-Reverte's novel. While the novel was inherently cinematic, McBride added an extra dimension: the folds of inner narrative, of dreams and fantasies were mapped onto the body of the on screen detective, with insight conflated with nudity. To accomplish this insofar as he could, he found a quite beautiful and intuitively talented young actress. Like Nastassja Kinski and Asia Argento before her, she grew up in an acting family and genuinely knew how to map narrative on her body, unafraid to be as sexually complex as possible. Together, Kate Beckinsale and McBride made an interesting if not profoundly successful film.Like Kinski and Jovovich, Beckinsale would go on to make films directed by lovers, films that would shamelessly exploit this talent. But in between her First Alice and her leathered vampire phase, she was Alice in a literal film version of the book. Well, it is not quite literal in that we have to explain why a redheaded sexual being is in this looking-glass world, and plot accommodations are made based on the Pérez-Reverte model.This film is a disaster, an utter disaster if you take it as it comes. It has none of the magic of the book, though the language and images are used exactly. It has none of engagement that other experiments have with whatever mix of mystery and sex they use. And though it experiments with cinematic inner visions, the devices used are from Terry Gilliam and all utterly fail.But if you see it in this greater context of Kate's mother, the Lewis Carroll cover-up and deliberately obfuscated magic; if you see it as overtly sexual but with the sex completely hidden: homeopathic seduction, then it works amazingly well. Alice as a redhead!Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

hugmedonkey I remember loving this extra surreal and abstract version of the already wacky Alice in Wonderland book when i was a lot younger. But I had a small problem with the fact that it is Alices mother who gets to star in the movie and play Alice, though i always thought that Kate Beckinsale did a great job of portraying the character. However now that i am older i would definitely say that this is the best version of Alice in Wonderland that i have ever come across. Alice is perfect. She is thoughtful and a little crazy but in a mature way (but not so mature as to ruin the fact that Alice is a little girl). The queens are excellent, Tweedledum and Tweedledee are great, and the rendition of 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' is superb . I would recommend this to everyone who loves the Alice books, especially adults.

gluebben I really enjoyed this adaptation. It was far and above better than Disney's attempt to turn what is already a children's book into a 'kiddie' film. It was, with very few exceptions, very true to the book, despite the difficulties associated with converting Carroll's unique style to a screenplay.Something I've always felt critical to adapting both Alice stories is her precocious nature. There is truly no way a child actor could handle the scope of Alice in any film. I thought moving the story to an older Alice was wonderful. And Kate Beckinsale's performance in that capacity was outstanding. She brought to life the very childlike innocence and naivete of Alice while dealing so very well with interpreting Alice's very opinionated, stubborn and whimsical personality. And visually, she fit the role perfectly. :-)The quirky nature and self-interpretation in this film is a wonderful way to introduce children to a complex and bizarre children's story. I can only hope that it will be available on DVD someday.