Phoebe in Wonderland Review
Drama Tries Too Hard to be Serious in a Land of Make-Believe
Jun 24, 2009
Don’t expect to fall too far down the rabbit hole during Phoebe in Wonderland; this “fantasy” film is much more grounded in the harshness of reality.
It becomes clear early on that anyone coming into the movie expecting a magical amalgamation of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland and the everyday life of a 9-year old girl will leave disappointed. This is not Pan’s Labyrinth, and therein lies the problem.
Drama Tries Hard to Deal With Serious Issues
Instead, this is the story of Phoebe (Elle Fanning), a girl with Tourette syndrome and an obsession with Alice in Wonderland (or, at least, an obsession with playing Alice in the school play). She shouts things out and claims she can’t stop herself; she jumps around on the staircase saying she has to hit each step in just the right order or she’ll be fired from the play; she spits on her classmates; and, as the younger sister of Dakota Fanning, she looks adorable doing so.
But this is not a cute movie. It doesn’t try to be cute. It wants to be taken seriously. Look – Phoebe is washing her hands compulsively until they’re raw and bloody. Something deep is going on here! Maybe; but then again, maybe not.
Much like every other movie about a dysfunctional family of intellectuals, Phoebe comes with plenty of quirks and loads of embarrassing scenes that necessitate a remote control be within arm’s reach of the viewer and also a bag (or similar) to deposit all the hair said viewer will pull out while struggling to get through this artful story. Perhaps the trend of offbeat indie dramas dealing with serious family issues should have died with The Squid and the Whale.
Unbelievable Characters Contribute to Viewer Frustration in Wonderland
One of the problems with Daniel Barnz’s little drama is that, for all the wrong reasons, it’s too fantastical. When is the last time anyone saw a 7-year old girl dress up as Karl Marx for Halloween and then go on a hunger strike because chickens are treated inhumanely when they are killed and processed for food? It’s probably safe to assume the answer is “Never.” Then, how can one feel for any of these characters when they seem like merely impossible characters and not real people?
Of course, that is the whole point of Carroll’s Wonderland – it is filled with impossible characters. But Alice in Wonderland was an escape from the boredom of a world where the books have no pictures. Phoebe in Wonderland offers no escape from that world. If anything, it serves to reinforce the point that there is no escape, and that is a rather bleak message for a movie that promised to be a touching family affair.
Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman co-star in Phoebe in Wonderland, which should not be mistaken for a children’s movie – it contains adult themes, derogatory language toward homosexuals, and even some R-rated language.
