Alice
1990
*
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Mia Farrow, William Hurt, Joe Mantegna, Blythe Danner, Keye Luke, Holland Taylor, Judy Davis, Alec Baldwin, Cybill Shepherd, June Squibb, Bernadette Peters, Linda Wallem
Alice Tate is a well-to-do Manhattan housewife in a seemingly stable but ultimately stale marriage. After a Chinatown herbalist prescribes her magical remedies, she begins to re-evaluate her life and relationship. This magical realist comedy-drama, loosely based on Federico Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965) and Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is arguably one of Woody Allen's weakest films. I couldn't get a handle on Alice or her wants and needs at any point. In fact, I was so bored that all the usual Woody Allen tropes — cultured characters who appear not to work, drift from one dinner party to the next, and fall in and out of love on a whim — really started to annoy me this time.
