Alice - Una vita sottosopra

Alice McKinley (Alyson Stoner) has to move with her family, dad Ben (Luke Perry) and brother Lester (Lucas Grabeel), to a new town. Her mom's dead since she was 5. She is awkward and have imaginary fantasies. She gets put in with the stern Mrs. Plotkin (Penny Marshall) but she wants so much to be with the happy pretty Miss Cole. Elizabeth (Parker McKenna Posey) is the neighbor girl. Pamela (Bridgit Mendler) is the mean girl.

The fantasies look weak and way too cutesy basically pinker with spotlights. Alyson Stoner is reasonably interesting as the gawky teen and she shows some acting range. It's not a bad kids movie but it's not particularly great either. Penny Marshall plays an interesting character. The mother's death provides some depth to the movie and there are some serious issues being dealt with here. It's OK for the genre but it does need better directions.

This is a little too lightweight to be of interest to most adults, but for what it is, it's done pretty well. Sure there are serious topics here, but they are not explored in any great depth or with any signs of real pain and suffering, so would be quite suitable for a younger audience, or for all the family to share in.

Stoner is very cute here but she does look and act her real age (14) when she is supposed to be playing an 11 year old. That's a big age gap at that time of life, and for me her performance just doesn't work at that level, but that's not really to the detriment of the film as a whole. She is not the most talented actress by a long chalk, but she has a certain charm on screen that many young stars lack, and it is easily sufficient to carry a light movie like this.

Grabeel is good and there is ample support from all the kids. Perry is Perry. Marshall is probably the best of the bunch, experience obviously telling. All in all the performances are competent and the characters sufficiently well rounded to make them interesting, even if the plot itself is a little weak.

Few flaws here then, but don't expect to be wowed. One for a rainy day in with the kids.

A feature that is likely to be 'extremely okay family genre' for those who have not read the novel.

The reviews to date say a positive and okay movie, just there are not so many reviews. They are also not by people who are fans of the novels, those are over in the message board.

Once upon a time a writer called Phyllis Reynolds Naylor started what was to become a very approachable series of novels about a girl called Alice McKinley. They started in The Agony Of Alice as she was moving house and about to start year seven, the senior year of her close to Washington USA elementary school, no bigger and older ones in the school. From novel 3 she is at High School part 1, years 8 and 9. From novel 13 she is at High School part 2, years 10 plus. Some aspects of the schools seem more English than USA, which might be the author trying to make the series more accessible.

I did not start reading them until the second novel and I was not expecting this feature to have much in common with the novels. For me it is a spur to go back to the first novel, then to the others, and it surprises me just how much of the feature actually is in the first novel. Not all, but a lot, though often changed in big ways. Looking at them afresh also shows me that there are many more novels available now, including prequels, ages 8, 9 and 10. This is a feature that makes me go and buy some paperbacks and by novel 16, Including Alice, they still seem really okay, just different as the storytelling changes as Alice gets older. Age 11, her world is different to age 16 and this series goes to age 18, maybe. That makes these very different to the London UK based Ally's World series of Karen McCombie, also very okay.

The casting of Alyson Stoner as Alice. Camp Rock and Suite Life make me consider that to be an excellent choice. Apart from the music and dance skills. Except that the novels would need her to be closer to the age that she was in Suite Life. How rude of me to consider that to be a weak point of this adaptation, a class of fourteen year olds playacting as eleven year olds. For me, it gets in the way.

Brother Lester, Lucas Grabeel, in the novels he is closer to Grabeel's own age. He also had lots of hair. For this 2007 movie the 22-ish year old Grabeel actually had to play a high school kid rather than a university student. The director even made him shear his head. Except, in some ways, the feature is nice for drawing out some aspects of Lester's character. I just accepted him and this feature does make me have to reconsider who the characters are, but the novels are not this Lester.

Lots of detail is changed in a way capable of horrifying fans of the book. Dad, Aunt Sally, etc. At least that is not at the level of Harry Potter movies 4, 5 and 6 where the whole spirit feels inverted, it could easily have been a lot worse. This portrayal of Alice is not quite as upside down. The film-making destructors not as active as in the later Harry Potter novels, but much more active than in Philosopher's and Chamber.

I still do not understand why so much detail was changed. Adaptations often make changes due to technical differences between book and film. A lot of the changes, here and in other adaptations, do not seem needed. For a series such as this the changes felt foul, lacking.

This is a world where some forms of vandalism have become the norm. Considered laudable, in fact. Adaptations are said to be a gesture of respect for the original. If they turn the original on its head, one way of the destructors, then I do not consider it to be a gesture of respect.

I experience this author and such as Rowling and McCombie to have a mature-ish approach to symbolism and characterisation. But many film type storytellers appear to be reactionaries, effective stories about scrambled people being given the hatchet.

I tended to consider such vandalism as the prerogative of artists in England, but it is more widespread. Educators certainly tend to have a 'destructors' mode. Health care workers, those angels are maybe my biggest problem with England, just now.

This movie would appeal to most ages, not just teens & pre-teens.

First for the 70's & 80's, Penny Marshall portraying a tough teacher. She turned out to be a little caring later on, had a little Laverne DeFazio in her.

Then for the 90's, Luke Perry of classic 90210. He owned a music store & showed his hidden talent that he could play the guitar & sing. Guess Dylan McKay didn't want to pose a threat to either David Silver or Ray Pruit.

And for this decade, Lucas Gabriel. The High School Musical star who boldly did what no HSM star would dare do, play an instrument! He was cool playing the guitar, but did he have to have a shirtless rock band? Disney would disapprove that, but not Chippendale's (LOL).

I only got this movie to watch Luke Perry. I went on a 90210 binge last year and ever since then I've been watching anything he's in, just trying to recreate the lost 90210 feeling, I guess. Perry has this way of acting that is similar in everything he's in so every time I watch one of his performances it is always like going back to Dylan, as much has he is trying to broaden his types of roles.

Anyway, about the movie, depressing. I wouldn't recommend this for a child because the themes are way too rough, I almost cried. Dude, harsh. Girl loses everything and embarrasses herself in the process, that's basically the tag of this flick. I wouldn't want my 10 year old to watch it and then wonder who she's going to lose, God forbid. And then on the other side, I wouldn't recommend this to an adult either because the acting, music, and story plays out for a children's audience. So, it make sense that this went straight to DVD. There's no audience left.

The acting itself, if you look past the mandatory made-for-children silliness part of everyone's role-playing, was pretty decent. These people are all pros so they took whatever they had to work with and did it well. The main character of Alice is pretty likable, as are the rest of the cast, but their acting and story lines were sill pretty typical.

Luke Perry was Luke Perry and that justified me sitting through the film. His acting was exactly what it was supposed to be and I loved every second of it. Such a contrast to the gunfighter character he played in the movie that came out a week before this one was released, but at the same time he has his trademark nuances that will never leave him in anything he is in and that's what I came to see. And being that I'm always just really only trying to find Dylan McKay in every role he plays, I melted in 90210-nostalgia the second Ben McKinlay met his love interest in this movie, Kelly. Hearing him say her name each time was incredible, except for the fact that he didn't once call her "Kell," that would have made this whole experience perfect! The rest of the cast were just there doing their thing, the music was also just there doing its thing, nothing too terrible, but not something the Grammy committee will be looking at anytime soon. It was a nice touch that the actors all sang their respective songs, though. They all have pretty good voices. Perry's musical talent was also a pleasant surprise.

So, all in all, if you're a huge fan of any of these actors, you won't be disappointed, as they do their thing as they should. However, if you are strictly looking for a good movie, look elsewhere. It's less feel-good than heartwarming, but even the attempts to warm the heart turn into more of a wrench in the gut.

PS -- (cough coug) *Zack Morris Wannabe* (cough cough)