rgshanks

This picture is barely passable entertainment at best, with Candy and Levy as disgraced cop and solicitor respectively sniffing out corruption and murder in the security firm which they have both joined to forge new lives. Candy is given meagre opportunity to display his undoubted skills in a picture which relies too heavily on sight gags and chases (most of which fail to come off, and many of which are, in truth, distasteful), and too little on verbal comedy at which Candy often excels. Levy is lightweight and inconsequential in a role which is too underwritten to warrant the buddy status for which the film would have you believe it hankers. Robert Loggia does his best to instil some menace into his part as a crooked union leader cum gangster, but the strictly formulaic nature of the plot and character development and the unfortunate attempts at comedy, suffocate the best efforts of all involved to lend credibility and accomplishment to the production - one which Candy could hardly have looked back upon with affection.

A delightfully unique film which explores a historically researched image of Lewis Carroll as a man with a fixation (albeit merely platonic) on young girls, and expands the premise to consider the effect that his obsessions may have had on the later life of his model for Alice. Holm's impersonation of Carroll is of a gentle but, at times, pathetic figure whose passion for the company of Alice Liddell is matched only by that for the development of his characters and narrative that were to become the "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" classics, for which Alice Liddell was his model. The young Alice is sweetly and endearingly played by Amelia Shankley in the flashback sequences with Holm, but the film is also centred around the attendance at a celebration of the centenary of Carroll's birth of the now 70-year old Alice, portrayed by Coral Browne. This older Alice is shown as a woman who has been shackled by her long celebrity as the role-model for the famous literary character and who has lived her life in a way which ensured that she was always seen to live up to that pure public image of her. As she travels to and arrives in America for the celebrations, various factors conspire to force her to acknowledge her symbolic insularity - the contrast between the brashness of the New World and the strictures of a society in which she has lived - the love affair which breaks out between her travelling companion and one of the reporters who meets her ship on arrival, an affair which initially brings to the surface strong but automatic emotions of aversion and disapproval. Gradually, she starts to question and, ultimately, to reject her past and all the values implicit in it. This is symbolised most vividly in the dream sequences in which she interacts with some of the characters from the "Alice" stories. Whilst created by Jim Henson's Muppet workshop, these images of Carroll's creations are not the cuddly, friendly visions reminiscent of, for instance, the Disney adaptation or other mainstream productions, but are much more darkly drawn, much more foreboding, much more, in fact, like the original illustrations of Carroll's work by John Tenniel. Rather than in the interests of authenticity, it seems that this depiction is chosen in order to represent the powerful hold of constriction in which these characters have held Alice. In the dream sequences, the creatures begin by continuing their overbearing influence over Alice but she gradually comes to question their power and their very existence as the circumstances unfold which cause her to evaluate her own life, until, in the final dream sequence, she ultimately rejects them completely, thus releasing herself to live out the rest of her days free of their restrictions and of the constraints of her whole past life. Throughout all these tribulations and inner examinations, Corale exudes a haunting and ever-calm aura in one of the most subtle examples of underacting it is possible to imagine.

The fact that many critics found this to be Wilder's funniest film for a long time has more to do with the paucity of quality in some of his earlier films than any greatness here. Wilder directs himself in a film which he also adapted from the screenplay for the French film "Pardon Mon Affaire", but is unable to bring the same life and zest which are the hallmarks of that production, despite adequate performances from a good ensemble cast, particularly the ever-reliable Grodin. The reality of the situation is that only the French appear able to make these gentle sex comedies with the flair which they deserve - witness, for instance, the vast chasm which exists between the entertainment values of Depardieu's "Mon Pere Ce Heros" and the straight Americanised remake starring the same actor.