(1990) Re-imagining Alice in Wonderland, writer/director Woody Allen's film belongs to his lesser creations.

A ditzy wife and mother with all of the advantages being married to a wealthy stockbroker can bestow - housekeeper, nanny, personal trainer, masseur, closets of clothes and shoes in a luxurious penthouse in New York City - Alice Tate (Mia Farrow) has been wed for nearly 16 years to Douglas (William Hurt), who mildly rebukes and discourages her endeavors outside of shopping.

However, at her kids' school a chance encounter with Joe Ruffalo (Joe Mantegna), a musician (plays saxophone) and single parent of a five-year-old daughter, transports this prissy Catholic (her idol is Mother Teresa) into a moral quandary of guilt about her carnal feelings for a man she hardly knows.

Taking up the recommendation from friends that she see Dr Yang (Keye Luke), an acupuncturist, for an ailing back and other aches, Alice, after being hypnotized with a spinning vortex (reliving her romance with Doug), takes prescribed natural herbs. With them the normally meek, mousy, mumbly loquacious Alice flirts shamelessly with Joe (but fails to show up the next day for their date in the penguin house at the zoo - "I can't just go out and commit adultery"), becomes temporarily invisible (observes Joe seduce his ex-wife Vicki in her office), and goes flying across the cityscape with Eddie (Alec Baldwin), the ghost of her departed beau from twenty years ago.

After lying to Doug about going out in the evening to see her sister Dorothy (Blythe Danner), she gets surly with Joe for her having misled her trusting spouse to be with him; leaving Joe, she goes to Dr Yang's where she finds him in an opium den. Alice experiments with writing TV scripts (more herbs provide her with a muse) and attending a college course in composition from Dorothy's husband. After overhearing rumors of Doug's dalliances, she investigates while invisible.

Dr Yang offers her one more herb, a very potent love potion, advising her to "Use wisely," since she may choose who will drink it.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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