Phoebe in Wonderland

Elle Fanning starrer stresses both the wonders and the terrors of the imagination. Elle Fanning starrer Phoebe in Wonderland is a live-action entry in the little-girl-fantasy genre that, like the puppet-animated Coraline (toplining Fannings sister Dakota), stresses both the wonders and the terrors of the imagination. Phoebe is differently enabled also beautiful, wistful and

Elle Fanning starrer stresses both the wonders and the terrors of the imagination.

Elle Fanning starrer “Phoebe in Wonderland” is a live-action entry in the little-girl-fantasy genre that, like the puppet-animated “Coraline” (toplining Fanning’s sister Dakota), stresses both the wonders and the terrors of the imagination. Phoebe is differently enabled — also beautiful, wistful and fey, as portrayed by Fanning. Whenever tyro writer-director Daniel Barnz sticks to his luminous star, his script’s blatant inconsistency reads as willful ambiguity. Whenever he vainly fleshes out Phoebe’s reality/fantasy axis, the unfocused pic founders in bathetic whimsy. Pic grossed $26,111 in its 11-screen debut over the weekend.

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Nine-year-old Phoebe suffers from Tourette syndrome, a fact coyly unrevealed until the pic’s denouement; the filmmaker, apparently, is as reluctant as Phoebe’s mother (Felicity Huffman) to accept “reductive” labels (though once Phoebe is pigeonholed, she can smilingly show-and-tell her disease in class). The syndrome manifests itself at school in antisocial behavior of a remarkably genteel bent (rarely has spitting been accomplished with such a minimum of phlegm and a maximum of provocation), and at home in more serious, self-destructive rituals, leaving Phoebe with night terrors and bloody hands and knees.

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Phoebe is given the lead role in a school production of “Alice in Wonderland,” ringmastered by a quaintly garbed, “Jabberwocky”-spouting drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson). This unleashes a scattershot barrage of quotes, cheesy hallucinations, circular pans and archly pretentious“Wonderland” comparisons (with Phoebe’s shrink, played by Peter Gerety, recast as a lamely costumed Humpty Dumpty), the already tenuous lines between reality and fantasy blurrily evaporating.

In “Heavenly Creatures,” “Coraline” or the peerless “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a girl’s entrance into a parallel universe symbolizes a deep sea change into something rich and strange; here, it signals a mishmash of motley agendas and trendy causes that contradict themselves.

Partly produced by Lifetime, the pic attempts to elevate the disease-of-the-week movie into a moral dialectic between conformity and imagination. Political correctness — the view of mental illness as an extension of normal behavior — trumps any narrative logic. Thus, Barnz arbitrarily posits a nonsensical series of school “rules” to embody conformity, while imagination is repped by Tourette syndrome.

For extra credit, Barnz throws in simplistically overwrought feminism: Huffman shrilly complains of the difficulty of reconciling work and motherhood, while Bill Pullman’s uninspired turn as Phoebe’s dad adds a touch of male cluelessness to the mix. Indeed, few adult actors manage to overcome the pic’s skewed point-making, Campbell Scott’s hilarious spin on a babbling, responsibility-avoiding principal being a notable exception.

This sorry straggler from last year’s Sundance Film Festival peaks with a wince-worthy New Age update of Andy Hardy, as Phoebe’s playmates learn the value of individuality by rote repetition of “I’m responsible!,” capped by a musical number of staggering unoriginality.

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Phoebe in Wonderland

  • Production: A ThinkFilm release of a Silverwood Films presentation, in association with Salty Features, of a Silverwood Films/Lifetime Pictures production. Produced by Lynette Howell, Ben Barnz. Executive producers, Doug Dey, Chris Finazzo. Co-producer, George Paaswell. Directed, written by Daniel Barnz.
  • Crew: Camera (color, widescreen), Bobby Bukowski; editor, Robert Hoffman; music, Christophe Beck; production designer, Therese DePrez; costume designer, Kurt & Bart; sound (Dolby Digital), Jeff Pullman, Michael Baird; casting, Avy Kaufman, Deborah Aquila. Reviewed at Broadway screening room, New York, Jan. 30, 2009. (In 2008 Sundance Film Festival.) Running time: 98 MIN.
  • With: With: Elle Fanning, Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson, Bill Pullman, Campbell Scott, Ian Colletti, Bailee Madison, Peter Gerety.

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