Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

morrison-dylan-fan With a poll being held on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best titles of 1990,I decided to take a look at Woody Allen's IMDb page.Discovering that Allen had made a film which appears to have become almost forgotten about,I decided that it would be a good time to find out if Alice did live here anymore.The plot:Taking her kids to school, socialite Alice Tate runs into a handsome man dropping his kid off at the school.With having been married to Doug for 16 years,Alice's life has become one that is focused on material possessions,partly related to the spark in her marriage having burnt out long ago.Talking to her friends about feeling attracted to someone other than Doug,Alice's friends advise her to a herbalist doctor called Yang.Meeting Yang,Alice starts to tell Yang about the sudden feeling that are developing.After getting Alice to reveal her inner feeling via hypnosis,Yang gives Alice a packet of herbs,which he claims will make her act on her impulsive feelings.Taking all the herbs,Alice soon enters a new & exciting wonderland.View on the film:Staying behind the camera,writer/director Woody Allen and cinematographer Carlo Di Palma use superbly-handled tracking shots to show all of the material possessions being at a distance from the "real" Alice.Sliding the movie into wonderful flights of fantasy,Allen dips into Alice's mind by startling infer red flashbacks,and a visit from a Ghost of Christmas Past-style character.Despite filming not being the easiest experience, (with Allen checking himself into hospital,shortly after finishing the films multiple re-shoots) the screenplay by Allen expertly cracks the shell of Alice's high-end,shallow life,thanks to Allen showing the riches to have drained any excitement from Alice's life.Enchanting Alice (and the audience) with the appearance of Dr.Yang,Allen reveals a real joy in taking advantage of the fantasy opportunity,as Allen uses Yang's herbs to take Alice from being invisible,to flying across a vast city.Made just before he passed away, Keye Luke gives a splendid performance as Yang,with Luke giving Yang a real sense of excitement,over helping Alice to peel away to her true self.Whilst her performance does contain some hints of being twee,Mia Farrow does very well at keeping Alice largely on the charming side,with Farrow giving Alice an excellent nervous energy,as Alice starts to turn away from her closed-in life,and begins to look into the looking glass.

TheLittleSongbird Alice is not Woody Allen at his best and admittedly I was expecting a little more from it after the brilliant Crimes and Misdemeanors(which is top 5 Allen) from the previous year. There are far better developed, more interesting and more identifiable characters in other Allen films, here some were underwritten and a couple like William Hurt's a touch irritating, the titular character was relatively well-developed though. Some of the actors are underused, like Hurt and Judy Davis and Mia Farrow does start off a little too stylised and soft which doesn't make her transformation quite as believable as it could have been. However, quite quickly she becomes very touching and her deadpan comic delivery really shines through, so while with not as strong a start it's actually a good performance. Joe Mantegna turns out good work too, although to a lesser extent he could have been better used, while Keye Luke, Cybill Shepherd and particularly Bernadette Peters and Alec Baldwin(in the most colourful supporting roles) make up an excellent supporting cast. Allen's direction is just right, the film looks beautiful with a dream-like quality at times and the soundtrack is hypnotic. The script and story are a mix of comedy, drama and fantasy, all three balanced well and all three work, with the comedy light-hearted and subtly witty, the drama affecting and not overwrought and the fantasy whimsical and nostalgic-feeling. Working out what was going on and what the film was trying to do and be wasn't a problem for me, and Alice ends cleverly and poignantly. All in all, a lovely film- if not as good as his late 70s-80s films- and a good start to Allen's 90s output though better was to come from that decade(Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets Over Broadway). 8/10 Bethany Cox

grantss Not one of Woody Allen's best. Has its moments but the plot is average. The whole upper-crustness and superficiality of all the characters was quite irritating. Mia Farrow was miscast as Alice. Woody Allen wrote the role for her, as he did many of his 80s movies (they were in a relationship, after all). However, she simply comes across as irritatingly mousy and neurotic. Typically Woody Allen would play the neurotic character, as that is all he knows (by his own admission) but as the part required a female, he probably thought Mia Farrow was his female equivalent.William Hurt nails the aloof, too-rich-to-care, stuck-up husband, though his character is quite irritating. Good support from Joe Mantegna, Alec Baldwin, Judy Davis and Cybill Shepherd.Overall, OK but certainly not a must-see, even if you are, like me, a Woody Allen fan.

MisterWhiplash 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.