Director: Dave McKean
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.0
Flashy update of Alice in Wonderland (crossed with The Wizard of Oz), only this time with a young, disgruntled teenager slipping into her own psyche (instead of a rabbit hole) to defeat the 'dark side' to her personality (a crass, punked out teen) and fight to save her Mom's life (her Mother takes two forms: as the dark villain - the strict Mom - and as the sleeping, innocuous, loving Mom). Essentially, this is an after-school special about learning to obey one's parents and avoiding experimenting in anything remotely risqué (smoking, 'eating chips' and snogging - the best parts of life for some) - while I can't argue with listening to one's parents (honestly, they aren't all that bad), doesn't 'dabbling' in different 'areas' of life help develop who we 'are?' Bah, I'm thinking too much about this: it looks amazing (which is what you get when you toss two comic guys - McKean and the prolific Neil Gaiman - onto a movie set), doesn't hold up to close psychological scrutiny (parent issues are so passé) but was clearly a labor of love.
