Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Brenda Chapman, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Here’s a fantasy drama that sets the stage for iconic journeys into Wonderland and Neverland. In fact, before Alice went to Wonderland, and ahead of Peter becoming Pan, they were brother and sister.
Based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, it depicts the title characters as siblings trying to help their parents overcome the death of their eldest son. David Oyelowo and Angelina Jolie play Jack and Rose Littleton who live in an idyllic country home. They are loving parents who rear their children to be imaginative free spirits. They play grieving parents in a lacklustre melodrama.
When their eldest brother David (Reece Yates) dies, Peter (Jordan A Nash) and Alice (Keira Chansa) seek to save their parents from downward spirals of despair until they are forced to choose between home and imagination. After the tragic accident, they are then forced to choose a path, setting the stage for their iconic journeys into Wonderland and Neverland.
Eight-year-old Alice and her mischievous brother Peter journey to London to sell a treasured heirloom. Returning home, Alice seeks temporary refuge in a wondrous rabbit hole, while Peter enters a magical realm as leader of the lost boys.
An air of near-constant amazement permeates the Littleton household. Also populating the storyline are a myriad of gatherings, rabbits and fanciful pirate ships. Alice has tea parties for her beloved stuffed rabbit, with a hand mirror at the ready, and Peter and David perform imaginary raids on an abandoned boat they discover in a nearby river.
Director Chapman, and screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill, imagined a wonderful fantasy tale, but it isn’t as “magical” as expected.
