The Top 10 Hunks of "Once Upon a Time in Wonderland"

Lewis Carroll never intended to create a coherent fantasy world, where people could actually live, with governments, economics, social structures, and logical rules.  Alice is dreaming.

So when later writers and filmmakers try to make a Tolkienesque alternate-world fantasy out of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, they rin into countless problems: incoherent geography, sudden time shifts, queens without countries, worlds without history.  They closer they stick to the source material, the worse the results are.

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, a spin-off of Once Upon a Time, sticks too close.

Oh, there's a new plot, with new characters and the extensive back stories we expect from the original. But the convoluted interconnections make no sense.

The plot: An adult Alice returns to Wonderland to rescue her True Love, Cyrus (Peter Gadiot, left), who happens to be a genie.  She is assisted by the Knave of Hearts (Michael Socha, above) and the White Rabbit, and foiled by the Red Queen and Jafar from Aladdin.

Meanwhile, the Knave of Hearts turns out to be Will Scarlet from Robin Hood, who is searching for his lost True Love, Anastasia (not the heir to the Romanovs; the daughter of Rapunzel), who happens to be the Red Queen.

The White Rabbit and the Caterpillar are actual animals, but the Lizard is just a nickname.  You can't have it both ways.

There are woefully out of place puns ("Forget-Me-Knot") which destroy the versimilitude.

At least, like the original series, Wonderland is a hunk paradise.  Here are the top 10 hotties:

1. Michael Socha

2. Peter Gadiot





3. Matty Finochio as Tweedledee.  He and his Tweedledum counterpart are Anastasia's servants.

4. Lost alumnus Naveen Andrews as Jafar.

5. Raza Jaffrey as Taj, Cyrus's older brother and the heir to the throne of...um...genieland?

6. Dejan Loyola as Rafi, Cyrus's other brother, also a genie.

7.  Hugo Steele as Orang, one of Jafar's guards.

8. Steve Bacic as "The Grendel." In the original Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, it's just Grendel, his name, not his species.

9.  Darren Shahlavi as a genie hunter.

10.  Arkie Kandola as a bartender.  He's also a Vancouver-based Sikh comedian.














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How about another peek at Darren Shahlavi?

"Come Away": Alice Liddel and Peter Pan are Half in Love with Easeful Death

 

I'm a big fan of all things Alice in Wonderland, and while I don't care for the Peter Pan mythos, the premise of Come Away (2020) sounded intriguing.  Alice and Peter as siblings who visit Wonderland and Neverland together?  And by the way, they're black.  Race relations in Victorian society!  So I plopped down my $19.95 to Vudu's Theater at Home service the day it started streaming.

And then I started kicking myself.  

1. Dreary, depressing, obsessed with death -- ok, no problem. -- have you actually read the Alice and Peter Pan books?  Stay a child forever, if you can.  Growing up is terrible.  You have to do icky things like get a job and get married, and then you die. 

Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, with bitter tidings laden, shall summon to unwelcome bed ⁠a melancholy maiden!

2. Race is irrelevant Victorian society -- ok, no problem.  Maybe the black actors were cast because they aced their auditions. 

3. But it is unforgiveable to make us slosh through the melancholy, dreary, painfully depressing world of adults, where it's always winter but never Christmas (sorry, wrong book) to the bitter end, and Alice and Peter NEVER GO ANYWHERE!  

They're supposed to be exploring Wonderland and Neverland, for chrissakes!

The plot: Alice, Peter, and their older brother David live in dreary Victorian England with their progressive parents, Jack (David Oyelowo, top photo) and Rose (Angelina Jolie), having pretend adventures.  Then one day they are all playing pirates when David falls into the lake and drowns.  

The family falls apart.  Jack descends to a world of gambling, gambling debts, and child neglect.  Rose, delusional and about to die of grief, takes to her bed and drinks.  Snobbish Aunt Eleanor arrives, plotting to send Alice away to boarding school, which strikes me as an excellent idea, but is presented as a fate worse than death.  Well, a fate the same as death.  

Don't let the smiling faces fool you.  After the first five minutes, no one ever smiles again -- for the rest of their lives.

Alice and David try to ease their pain by rumbling through the Victorian underworld, encountering tawdry real-life versions of the characters and situations of Neverland and Wonderland  For instance, a Mad Hatter prototype runs the pawn shop where they are trying to raise some cash to pay Dad's gambling debts.  

But there is no Wonderland.  There is no Neverland.  There is no nothing.   

Peter, who blames himself for David's death and the destruction of the family, never manages to move on.  He "never grows up," vanishing into his father's world of gambling, drinking, and death.   Alice grows up, marries Mr. Darling -- the same thing as death -- has three kids (Michael, Wendy, and John), and writes the books as a form of grief therapy.

So if Peter Pan comes through the window, he will be Wendy's uncle?

The books were actually written by J. M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll, who were living in England during this period and occasionally smiled. Wouldn't it have been cool if Alice and Peter met them?

Or if, like, they actually had the adventures the movie promises?

This lying, deceptive piece of con-artist garbage reminds me of The Bridge to Terabithia, which also lures you in with the promise of an alternate world fantasy, only to punch you in the stomach: "Fooled you! This is a movie about a child dying, but you already paid, so we don't care."

Beefcake: No.

Gay characters: None specified.

Heterosexism: Alice and Peter are siblings, so thankfully no pre-teen falling-in-love.

My grade: F-.