The "SyFy" channel's "Alice"

From American McGee's Alice to Tim Burton's Alice to the treatment of Alice in Lullaby, it seems like everyone has had a shot at "re-imagining" Lewis Carrol's classic of children's literature, Alice in Wonderland. When the "SyFy" channel (quotes required since it's such a silly name) decided to remake it into a two-night show, they dropped the better part of the title and made it just Alice. Why? The reason soon becomes obvious: because there's no wonder in this version of Wonderland.

The premise is fairly thin. The Queen of Hearts has taken over Wonderland and is using a casino (get it? she's a playing card?) to leech emotions out of humans from our world. She then sells these like drugs to the populace of Wonderland, keeping them within her power. Enter Alice, a girl who is, despite what you may be thinking, actually completely unrelated to the Alice of legend. There's plenty of speculation that she might be "the" Alice, but there really doesn't seem to be any connection. Apparently her only qualifications are that she wears a blue dress and her name is Alice.

Alice in Wonderland is full of vibrant and colorful locations, Alice, on the other hand, seems to take place mostly in dilapidated old hotels. The characters in Alice in Wonderland are quirky yet full of a strange kind of wisdom. The characters in Alice are virtually all human in appearance, and are only connected to the novel's characters by their names. The Mad Hatter, who isn't mad and doesn't make hats, is one of the best characters in the program, as charming and British as any Artful Dodger. Another standout is the White Knight, played by the guy who plays Taggart in Eureka. Another Sci Fi regular making an appearance is Colm Meaney, further proving my theory that the Sci Fi channel doesn't hire actors for certain shows, but just owns certain people. In my imagination, if I spilled my lemonade in the Sci Fi waiting room, Amanda Tapping, Ben Browder, or Michael Shanks would come out in overalls with a bucket and a mop to clean it up. Meaney does a capable job, but his character, the Queen of Hearts's weak-willed husband, doesn't have much to do. Alice herself is well played, but her writing is so dull that she doesn't have much to work with. The Queen is played by Kathy Bates, who is neither very menacing nor amusing, but whose acting rather gives the impression that everyone is just humoring her character.

Apart from traipsing around run-down old buildings and nondescript forests (neither of which have much Wonder in them), the other real set is the casino, which is brightly lit and consists of three fairly small rooms: the casino room, the Queen's throne room, and the third room.

The plot, such as there is, involves the Queen's son falling in love with Alice and giving her the ring which controls the portal into our world (the looking glass of the second novel's title). The Queen needs this to keep up enslaving humans and leeching their emotions, so she's determined to get it back. The rest of the film revolves around the characters evading capture, getting captured, escaping, evading capture, getting captured again, and escaping again to victory. The writing is remarkably lackluster (Alice's big speech to make the humans in the casino remember who they are is basically "REMEMBER! REMEMBER! REMEMBER YOUR FAMILIES!"). Although she's introduced as a karate expert, Alice needs rescuing several times. The March Hare, called Mad March, is described as the queen's top assassin, but gets taken out with one punch by the Hatter, whose combat skills really are second to none in this show, and make me wonder why he didn't just save Wonderland singlehandedly ages ago. The casino is left unguarded at a crucial moment when the White Knight dresses up a lot of skeletons in armor and stands them up outside. Why nobody notices him setting them up, and why they subsequently fall for attacking an army that only stands there, is anybody's guess; I suppose it's because everyone's mad in Wonderland.

The bottom line is this: this is a show about a wondrous place that could have used a giant heaping more wonder. A couple of charming characters can't do much to save a show with a weak script and no eye-popping set pieces. For a story that revolves around imagination, this program is sorely lacking, and that lets down what could have been a fun adventure.

THAT BEING SAID...

I have a suggestion for a new "SyFy" channel special:

"They fed him honey. They broke his house. They stole his tail. This Spring, Eeyore's really pissed... and he's not going to take it any more."