Alex im Wunderland

i saw this for the first time last night and thought it was fantastic - the best Mazursky movie i've seen (by far). i come here and find it has a 5.0 and most people hate it... strange. must have hit me at the right moment. i've been interested in seeing it for 20 years - glad i didn't until now.

yes, portions are derivative and pretentious, but Sutherland's incredibly likable and the film has a free and easy feel reminding me of a kind of urban easy rider. it's more of a long poem than a standard movie.

the sequence at Mazursky's office is amazing.

.....because I have fond memories around it. Yes...it is so very dated. But I remember the tender relationship Sutherland's character had with his family, his wife and two daughters, in this movie. I also remember how entranced I was with Donald Sutherland - the actor. He was so charming. This was the first movie I ever saw with him and the first movie I ever saw in the theater without my parents. It was the first time I was able to go to the movies with friends only, and what a time we had. All five of us silly, giggly, girls....and we couldn't take our eyes off of "THE Donald". So when you watch this movie now on cable or DVD, see NOT a movie of no value, but of a wonderful fantasy vehicle that five little girls took one Saturday afternoon in 1970. What a memory!

Alex in Wonderland is a great movie. As usual there are users on IMDb who are dissing this movie, telling: ooh, this is the worst D. Sutherland movie, it's so boring, this is not actually a movie (sic!)more short scenes bla bla bla...that's normal. They have a different taste, they've expected something else, who knows....some familiar people were dissing lot of other great directors, you know the ones which were categorized as unconventional, as if movies should been made conventional and well structured including dramaturgish suspense romance and being thrilling also and having "well written screenplayed executived characters"...or: they're knowledge in movies could fill a regular bean halfway....

Alex in Wonderland is a near to life movie. I've found myself in some scenes or better, my thoughts. D. Sutherland is bombing in his role playing really deep. He is a long-haired, bearded, free -soul director, who's trying to find a subject for his next movie...and then a lot of funny & strange things are taking place...(what a plot description)

It's a movie for your brain & eyes, it's colorful and chilling and warm and intimate and surreal and sad...and it also leaves room for your own thoughts.

For all you cine-dudes and D. Sutherland fans give this gem a try. (You can also catch it on TCM)

And don't give this dumb user any importance who was saying "And what's with the "pedofile" scene at the beginning of the movie"...What a jerking doh-doh! In this particularly scene Alex Morrison takes a bath with his child. Which loving father or mother on this holy earth wouldn't take a bath with their own beloved child...If you call that a "pedofile" scene, then there is no hope for you fella, you're just sick & rotten....you're head is empty.

This is definately not for everybody. I found this really interesting and since I started combining forces of cable TV with IMDB I discover really nice films. After all THERE ARE nice, different & interesting american films, even in the seventies!

Anyway, this movie is not for people who like one-dimentional films. This is both serious and funny, both tragic and amusing. Even if its not too slow, it won't appeal to those who like it fast.

Basicly it's about an intelligent director who is starting to lose it a bit. This is depicted in a most realistic way. I dont know what it has in common with Fellini's 8-IN-1, as I havent seen it. Anyway ALEX IN WONDERLAND implies a straight effect of 8-IN-1 on it.

The dialog is the strongest about this one and people on stupid action films or those who dont like a dialog based flick wont find anything in this one.

I'm very fond of films made from the late 1960s through the mid 1970s for their experimental attempts to get beyond genre conventions. I had fully expected "Alex in Wonderland" to be an overlooked psychedelic gem. While the film does have some amazing hallucinatory set-pieces (the most elaborate, a violent war in Hollywood with soldiers firing into a crowd while 2 men in top hats and tails dance on a flaming station wagon to the tune "Hooray for Hollywood"), most of the action is plodding. Donald Sutherland as Alex, goes off on many travels and tangents to entertain ideas for his next directorial effort. None of the episodic scenes build on each other and aside for gloriously lensed shots (by Laszló Kovács) of Sutherland in full hippie regalia walking introspectively in a variety of locations, there is little cumulative insight.