Review of Alicja

Alicja (1982)
5/10
Odd, loose musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Quite odd!
13 September 2004
I've had a used video of this movie sitting on my shelves for some time. Where I bought it, I'm no longer sure: perhaps a local video store chain, or a pawn shop, perhaps as part of deal. The version I saw was entirely dubbed in English; I'm not sure if a Polish version with Polish songs exists.

This certainly is a strange movie. Sophie Barjac, playing Alice, is quite lovely and appealing, and without her it might have been more difficult to get through.

The movie starts in a park, where Alice is friendly with a young girl of less than ten, I'd guess, who is pointing out her various boyfriends, and asking Alice if she has a boyfriend. Alice doesn't (she's a divorcée), but she finds herself attracted to an older man jogging through the park, who the girl thinks looks like a rabbit. Alice spots a sniper just outside the park, and she faints after the jogger goes down. She is awakened by the jogger and the girl, however. Was she daydreaming, or hallucinating, or having a premonition? It was never really clear to me, and the end of the movie just increased my confusion (and this was just the beginning of the movie!).

Alice works at a factory with Mock Turtle and Gryphon. She encounters Rabbit again there, who is taking a tour for some reason. Rabbit starts trying to win her over, and the first of many musical numbers takes place as Rabbit dances his way to the employee break room.

Meanwhile, Rabbit is also having financial difficulties of some kind. He is in debt to Queenie, or Queenie resents Rabbit having rejected her at some point in the past, I'm not sure. Queenie has hired a pair of snipers to kill Rabbit. Alice also visits her ex-husband, an airplane pilot named Cheshire Cat. Mock Turtle and Gryphon would like Alice to fall in love with one of them, but they don't have a chance, since she is falling in love with Rabbit.

Much later in the movie, after a brief animated sequence, there's a number (another dream/ hallucination) in a disco with most people wearing mannequin-like masks, and Alice wearing a white nightgown. She follows Rabbit out, and she's captured by revelers in the street dressed as if for a Renaissance fair. She's saved from having her head chopped off by a rope ladder dangling from a helicopter, which later seems to explode. This introduces another musical sequence, "I'm a Psychiatrist."

A lot of other things happen in the movie. There are a lot more musical numbers in it than the average, more typical musical, I think. It's an odd movie, and I think it would appeal more to people inclined towards odd musicals like Shock Treatment (1981) and True Stories (1986).
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