Mixed messages of Girl Power as Alice In Wonderland

Rating: 7/10 (12 October 2014)

The summary is important to the experience but admittedly trivial to the story telling. You all know how I adore fun and smart storytelling. Alternate realities or what if scenarios have their place in cinema but are best not set up as such. Let us discover there other worlds and realize the goods and perils on our own. Thanksfully we are left to our own smarts even if the movie watcher deal of plausible mythology falls short on delivery. Same issue with Pans' Labyrinth. Here we have another dark child's' story whose villain is on par with serial kidnappers. Our three ghosts at the end confirm the wickedness at hand. That exceeds children's story lines in my acceptable script book, but then that story is seeming left to the parents to explain later. Mythology fail. Carolines' determination to be independent and then return to the scene of the sumptuous horror to save her parents is equally heroic. This works on face level without being all saccharine and plastic roses, thankfully! Another reviewer has detailed the Alice In Wonderland links, so I'll just say that the "home" and "grass is always greener" messages were evidently accessible where the ghosts of the past simply left the Parents holding the bag of explaining evil in the world right after the kids have been shown to appreciate what they've got.