Alice in
Murderland is entertaining because of the characters of the movie
are reduced to characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice in
Wonderland. Each character in the movie puts on a costume to the
respective Alice in Wonderland character that they are pretending to
be at the party. Because each character has the same personality as
their Alice in Wonderland counter part, the characters of the
movie are reduced to being someone in the Alice in Wonderland
book. For example, the character named Alice plays Alice and exhibits
traits of being scared, concerned about her future, and loss of
personality. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are represented by Donna and
Dee because they are both stupid, oblivious to the murdering
Jabberwocky and do whatever they are told. Characters in the movie
are no longer are themselves, but the characters from Alice in
Wonderland.One character, the Jabberwocky, is intended to be a
ruthless murderer, but becomes a laughing stock every time it enters
the camera due to the caricature of the character. The costume which
makes up the Jabberwocky is a bird like creature with a huge neck and
red hair. The costume is supposed to be scary by trying to
exaggerated the creatures features, such as a bird like head and a
long neck. However, the rest of the costume is reduced to nothing
more than a black shirt that goes to the actors feet. The clash of
exaggeration of the characters head and reduction of his body causes
one to find the character funny.
Dennis Devine's
attempt at plot development causes some of the scenes and the plot as
a whole to be incongruent. While incongruency in a movie usually
leaves the audience unhappy, Alice and Murderland's
incogruency is entertaining. When Malory, the party planner is going
to meet her uncle, she wants him to let her use the glass house for
the party she is hosting for Alice. When running into him she see
that he is having a debate with her boy friend, Andrew. The mini
debate goes on for a minute talking about missing an art class and
ends after Andrew tells Malory's uncle he must get a C in the class.
Malory's uncle responds with “Are you... threatening me?” in a
monotonic voice (Alice in Murderland). Final Malory utilizes one line
to ask her uncle about the glass house before the scene ends. The
scene was obviously an attempt at plot development, but it has almost
nothing to do with the plot of the movie. The result is it clashes
with the actual plot. The scene is out of place to such a degree that
it is one of the most funny scenes of the movie. Not only do
individual scenes have issues, but the plot as a whole is
incongruuent. A notable moment was when Kat was talking about how her
mother was the one who killed Alice's mother. Kat says her mother
told her she killed Alice's mother. In the movie Alice's mother was
killed when Alice was one year old. Since Kat is stated to be the
same age as Alice, she would have been one year old as well at the
time of the killing. It is virtually impossible for Kat to know her
mother was the killer via her mother telling her because Kat mentions
that her mother killed herself immediately after killing Alice's mom.
Kat had no way of knowing that her mother was the killer because she
was too young and her mother died before she could have told her. The
inconguity between the plot is an example of Bergson's comic
techniques which entertains the audience because there is a clash of
ideas in the plot.
“ Are you
threatening me?” (Alice in murderland).
