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Witchie poo >>
Fairy tale fun hits rock bottom by MATTHEW HAYS
You’ve got to hand it to the Quebec film scene-this crew has chutzpah. In the overwhelmingly more tepid English-Canadian film milieu, for example, you would never expect that someone would come up with the idea of a comedy musical about a woman stuck in a parallel universe made up of every fairy tale cliché imaginable. But that’s just what director Denise Filiatrault has done with L’Odyssée d’Alice Tremblay, in which Sophie Lorain plays the title character. It seems Alice (an obvious nod to Alice in Wonderland) leads a very unhappy life as a single mom in Montreal. But suddenly-with no real explanation offered at all-she’s whisked away into another world, where send-ups of fairy tales run fast and cheesy. Look, there’s Mitsou playing a nymphomaniacal Little Red Riding Hood! And there’s Martin Drainville-whose rich running gag throughout this film consists of him falling down-playing an aspiring Prince Charming! We follow Alice as she stumbles through various different scenarios-the film lifts from everything from Wizard of Oz to H.R. Pufnstuff-meeting up with everyone from Snow White and the seven dwarfs to Santa Claus. Watching Alice Tremblay, it’s rather tricky to figure out what demographic the filmmakers were aiming for. It seems to be aimed at children, in particular nondiscriminating children, especially ones who suffered some kind of oxygen deprivation as infants which has left them at a mental disadvantage. But that’s mysterious too-there are a number of raunchy jokes involved here, from people getting their asses grabbed on occasion to Mitsou getting rear ended during a dance number to Alice almost getting date raped by a nasty libidinous prince. Seeing as the raunch factor places this thing firmly in adult territory, it’s hard to know how to approach something this thoughtless, poorly written, routinely choreographed and generally tedious. Certainly, the film features turns by many of Quebec’s thespian stars, including Marc Labrèche and Denise Bombardier. But really, that only prompts the question: are things so dire for prominent local actors that they have to resort to drivel this bad for a few extra bucks? : L’Odyssée d’Alice Tremblay opens Friday, June 28 |
