"You're damn right I wouldn't! He almost killed me!"
"Yeah, well he actually shot me!"
When her boyfriend Jack (Winchester) is kidnapped, Alice (Scorsone) enters Wonderland to rescue him. When she arrives in Wonderland, a tattoo of an oyster appears on her arm and she is captured. She manages to escape, and is taken to Hatter (Potts), who agrees to help her return to her world. But she refuses to go without Jack.
Hatter takes her to see Dodo (Tim Curry), the leader of the resistance, who is reluctant to help, until he sees the ring Jack gave to Alice. The ring is the Stone of Wonderland, which opens the portal between the human world and Wonderland. When Dodo tries to take the ring, Alice and Hatter escape and eventually team up with the last White Knight (Frewer), named Charlie.
Meanwhile, the Queen of Hearts (Bates) is furious that the Stone of Wonderland is missing. Her minions, the White Rabbits, use the Stone to travel into the human world to kidnap Oysters to drain their emotions and keep the people of Wonderland under the Queen's control. To get the Stone back, she dispatches her favorite assassin, Mad March (Redknap), to bring Alice back to the palace.
Beginning in 2007, SyFy revamped classic children's literature with a re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz. After the series was met with success, they tried it again in 2009 with Alice in Wonderland. The plot is not the same as the original story or serving as a sequel to the original... it stands alone, with many of the same characters. This Alice, played by Caterina Scorsone of TV's "Private Practice," is a modern girl that ends up in Wonderland by mistake. It is an interesting take on a classic and oft-told tale.
The cast is great. I was not familiar with Andrew Lee Potts before this series, but I would like to look into more of his work. It was fun to see Matt Frewer, who I love as Taggart on SyFy's TV show "Eureka," in this role. He gets some great moments, especially towards the end, when he and the other White Knights take on the Queen's forces. Kathy Bates is great, as usual, as the main antagonist. Everything works, except some of the effects (like the Jabberwocky), but it doesn't take away from the story. It works well as a miniseries, instead of attempting to jam everything into a single story.
Don't let the fact that it is a SyFy miniseries / movie... it is well done and entertaining (for the right reasons). This is my favorite, so far, of the SyFy miniseries / reimagining of classic... which could be because I love Alice in Wonderland. The series occasionally plays on the SyFy network and is available to rent from Netflix. It is worth looking into.
Alice (TV mini-series 2009) 240 minutes
Caterina Scorsone as Alice
Andrew Lee Potts as Hatter
Matt Frewer as White Knight
Philip Winchester as Jack
Timothy Webber as Carpenter
Zak Santiago as 10 of Clubs
Charlotte Sullivan as Duchess
Kathy Bates as Queen of Hearts
Colm Meaney as King of Hearts
Eugene Lipinski as Doctors Dee & Dum
Geoff Redknap as Mad March
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