The wonderland of memory is revisited by 80-year-old Alice Hargreaves, who as a child was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's 'Alice In Wonderland'. Spoiled by a lifetime of coddling, the aging Alice arrives with her young ward in New York City to honor, reluctantly, Reverend Charles Dodgeson (aka Carroll), whom she recalls with unflattering cruelty as little more than a pathetic, lovestruck man with an embarrassing stutter. But soon the infirmities of age and the attention lavished on her in the New World begin to invoke the ghosts of her Victorian childhood, bringing to life the stories she once inspired and softening her rigid disposition. Some thematic strands are left dangling at the film's conclusion, but otherwise it's a charming fantasy about the redemptive powers of nostalgia, co-starring the delightfully malevolent Wonderland denizens of Muppet-man Jim Henson.
Review of Dreamchild
