Alice (1990)

Please don't spend money on this.

Instant Favorite.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"Alice" suffers from an undramatic storyline. There is drama alright, but it is immediately sugarcoated. So this movie wanders a bit between wanting to be a comedy (without great jokes, bummer) and wanting to be dramatic, but served with too much sugar on top. It is still charming, acting is great, soundtrack is lovely. It is still a lovely Woody Allen film, but the sum total just falls flat. The mood of this picture is almost identical to the boring life style Alice is leading. She has got everything she could desire for moneywise, but she feels unfulfilled. She visits a chinese doctor who prescribes for her a special herbal medicine, which makes her invisible. Yes, that sounds silly. It is silly, but this is suppose to be the fun part. And although being invisible triggers some jokes, it becomes somewhat childish too after the first gimmick of being invisible has worn off. However new opportunities open up with these invisible making chinese medicine. Her life becomes adventurous again. But not without having to face some losses too...As I said at the very start. This movie just doesnt reach the quality of Woody Allen's earlier work. There are much better dramatic and funny pictures of Woody Allen to be found. Watch "Hannah and her Sisters" for a much better drama about marital betrayal. Watch " Purple Rose of Cairo" for a much better romantic comedy. And dont forget about some other classics that you must give a try because director and writer Woody Allen has made such a wonderful line of work. Really anything from the eighties down to the seventies is worth watching. Halfway through the nineties Woody Allen lost some of his magic touch that sparkled so brightly in his older work. "Alice" is still a charming picture. More senior older people who are first time viewers will surely enjoy this movie. But for younger people who long for more romance or comedy or long for more true to life drama there are a lot of much better Woody Allen films out there.

A Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe Production. Copyright 1990 and released by Orion Pictures Corp. New York opening: 25 December 1990. 106 minutes. (A superb DVD from M-G-M).SYNOPSIS: A moody housewife consults a Chinese herbalist with startling results.NOTES: Mia Farrow won the National Board of Review's award for the year's Best Actress. Final movie appearance of Keye Luke. It was his 200th film.COMMENT: Woody Allen at his very best! In fact, I'm particularly attached to this movie. When the opening credits ran by to the accompaniment of "Limehouse Blues", I knew I was in for a real treat, music-wise. As it turned out, however, the superb music score was overshadowed by the delightful fantasy of the screenplay and the brilliant performances delivered all the way down the line, but most especially by Mia Farrow, Joe Mantegna and Keye Luke.

While I still don't flat out love this film, I was surprised to find I liked it much more on a second viewing. While my original problem with it - thematically it's arguably a weaker, less original re-make of 'Purple Rose of Cairo' still stands, I found myself charmed, caught up and moved, off-setting those moments that are clunkier, too cute, or even borderline racist in their stereotypes. It will never be my favorite Allen film, but it's certainly still a strong effort and Mia Farrow may never have been better. There's enough movie magic here, that it's certainly worth seeing, and for myself, owning.

While Brian De Palma was in his part of the Park Avenue section of Manhattan making the curious disaster that was Bonfire of the Vanities, Woody Allen was in his section making something of a lighter story, satirical but less barbed and not quite as outrageous. It's about an upper-class housewife who has pretty much anything she could want, and is pampered: high-rise apartment, high-paid massages and clothes and jewelry and whatever, but she also has a boring husband and a back that is aching. So she's sent to a sort of mystical Chinese doctor who gives her a hypnotizing trick, and starts to give her herbs. This spurs on a different way of thinking, or, at least, an affair with a musician, and she also revisits painful memories of her past: a broken relationship with her older sister, and a her former lover who died when she was younger.The film addresses an interest that can be found in many of Allen's films, something one wouldn't expect from a filmmaker usually associated with therapist couches and satire on neurotics and intellectual New Yorkers, which is magic. One saw it in Purple Rose of Cairo, and one sees it here manifested in a fable structure. Alice (a charming and sometimes affecting Mia Farrow) has to change by her own accord, but is assisted by these 'herbs' that make her invisible, see her dead lover (Alec Baldwin in a great supporting role) in the same room with her, fly high in the sky, and speak with her sister at their old family home in her mind (whether that part is from the opium, if it even is opium, is hard to say), and a potion that will make any men fall desperately in love with her, which makes for the climax of the picture.Meanwhile, she tries to find herself, her creative spirit as a writer (if it's even there) and a possible lover in musician Joe Mantagna plays. There's some whimsy that Allen is dealing with here, and some intentionally obvious cinematic tricks (a spotlight on Baldwin, the choice in the music like out of a 40's escapist movie, the use of red tint when Alice is being hypnotized), but there's also a smart-serious undercurrent for Alice as a character. What will she do with herself? Will she stay with her husband in a complacent existence, or go with Joe, who may have his heart elsewhere? The resolution to this all is the kind of ending that wouldn't usually come in a fairy tale (I suspect it may have been inspired by Farrow herself, and her dedication to helping out third-world poverty-stricken children). But the film is satisfying as something light and fluffy, some satire of the rich and their petty concerns thrown in, and some existential 'Woody' angst thrown in for good measure.It's not a major work by any means, and I think Allen is content with it that way. It's also a fine showcase for Farrow (what films in the 80's weren't, i.e. Broadway Danny Rose) and her skills as a comedienne and as a serious actor, in equal measure.