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Alice In Wasteland (2006)

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Overall Rating 52%
Overall Rating
Ranked #13,155
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Beautiful girls and lethal weapons go hand-in-hand in this deadly, tongue-in-cheek, women in prison escape romp through the suburban streets of Detroit. --IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: February 4, 2009
Looks can certainly be deceiving. That's one of the underlying themes of today's film, and it's also pretty relevant to the latest batch of movies to come across my desk. You see, there were three discs in that latest batch: one of them was Stash, a little slasher flick that surprised the shit out of me with how nice it turned out to be, another was Opie Gets Laid, a film that falls outside of my normally preferred genres but got a high rating out of me, and of course, Alice in Wasteland.

Looking at the cover and reading the synopsis on the back of the DVD case, I expected Alice to be the pick of the litter for this week, so I sat it aside and decided to go with the old "save the best for last" routine. Let's look at the facts here: this is a film that promised plenty of scantily-clad women, loads of shootouts, enough trailer trash to make even Rob Zombie happy, and a blurb from The Independent assured me that this one delivers "twisting, fast-paced PURE EXPLOITATION enjoyment!" Throw in keywords like "hip", "cult", "unique", and "ex-Denver Broncos cheerleader", and really, who wouldn't automatically assume that this was an instant classic? Well, like I said... looks can certainly be deceiving.

As you might guess from the title, the film revolves around Alice (Roxane Sondrup), a young lady straight out of the trailer park who has plans to rob an armored car along with a group of her friends. The plan itself goes off without a hitch: she seduces the guard in charge of the car before knocking him out cold as he's pulling his pants off, and she then makes it to her getaway car with cash in hand. The only problem is that the driver of this getaway car decides to double-cross her with the help of corrupt cop Jill Robbe (Michelle Beisner), and poor Alice winds up with a couple of bullets in her chest for her troubles.

One year later to the day, she snaps out of her coma and finds herself handcuffed to a hospital bed. It seems that she's been taken care of while unconscious, but now that she's returned to the land of the living, she's immediately hauled off to jail for her part in the robbery. However, she manages to escape with the "help" of a fellow prisoner who enjoys a good round of lesbian fisting. Her first order of business? Get revenge on the cop who shot her, naturally. Of course, Jill is also intent on putting Alice down once and for all, and when they finally find one another... well, it's going to get messy.

Throw in plenty of teases of female flesh, some well-written characters, plenty of dialogue, and a splash of pop culture references, and you get the film known as Alice in Wasteland. Does this sound anything at all like something Quentin Tarantino would have put out? If you answered "yes, it sort of does", then congratulations: you are indeed correct. This film feels exactly like something that he would have whipped up back in the mid-nineties, but the difference is that this particular film doesn't have the charm of a Tarantino flick. The cast is rounded out by inexperienced actors who aren't particularly bad, but who also didn't have half of the abilities of those that Tarantino would have tossed in here, and the writing shares a similar fate in that it's nothing to complain about, but again, it doesn't hold a candle to what he would have stolen written. Basically, what I'm trying to say here is that the film feels like a poor man's Tarantino, and while that doesn't automatically make it a wretched release, I couldn't help but compare it to his films time and time again while watching the story unfold.

I'm really just throwing that paragraph out there for your consideration since I know that Tarantino has his fans and I also know that he has his detractors. Just about every film in the zombie genre is a poor man's Romero flick, so to say that like it's a bad thing is almost laughable. However, what does hurt the film is the emphasis on style instead of, say, action or exciting twists. Even though this is a low-budget indie flick, it does get a lot of points in the style department: some of these scenes offer up some nice eye candy, but while they're nice to look out, a lot of them simply don't offer much else. Again, the script isn't awful and it does have its moments, but it seems as though the writers took a good idea - a poor little bad girl sets out to get revenge on the crooked cop who wronged her - and tried to stretch it out to ninety minutes instead of writing some legitimate material to compliment said idea.

With a promise of "PURE EXPLOITATION enjoyment", one would expect some, you know, exploitation sleaze. Unfortunately, we don't get much of that. While it's true that we get plenty of cleavage shots and a handful of bra-and-panty shots, there isn't an ounce of actual nudity to be found - not even a brief shot of booty. Now, I'm not going to knock points off of my final rating due to a lack of titties, but given the promises that the DVD cover and the general premise made, I have to say that I was shocked at this decision especially considering that the film desperately needed something to make the time go by a little quicker. There's a handful of kills thrown in as well, but they're nothing to write home about: somebody gets shot, we see a splatter of blood, cut to the next scene.

I realize that I haven't said many positive things about the film, but I can't honestly say that Alice in Wasteland is an awful movie. It has an interesting storyline and it does have its moments (I loved the "killer" lesbian scene and the Swedish assassin was great), but it's just not the classic that I was hoping for. Watching the film was sort of like ordering a steak dinner and getting a hamburger on your plate instead: there's certainly nothing wrong with a "tasty burger", but damn, that steak was sounding mighty good when you placed your order. 5/10.
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