The Daily O’Collegian

When the credits start rolling and you only see one actor’s name listed under voices, you can bet it’s going downhill from there.

Neco z Alenky is a reimagining of Alice in Wonderland based on Lewis Carroll’s book.

Instead of using animation to tell the story, director Jan Svankmajer opted to use live action and stop motion.

Stop motion involves some inanimate object, including puppets and clay sculptures, moving a little bit in each frame.

Basically, they stop filming, move the object a half an inch or less and then resume filming for another second only to stop and repeat this process.

Think of it as the drawings on the corner of a notebook that move when you flip through all the pages.

The stop motion gives all of the characters a demented look, and the dark lighting helps to set a creepy mood.

Alice, unlike the heroine from the Disney classic, seems to have a passive aggressive personality that has her letting a rat build a fire on top of her head and then has her swinging like a mad woman at the White Rabbit to keep him out of his own house.

She does still have blond hair and gets confused easily, but the White Rabbit steals the show.

In this version, the White Rabbit is an unfortunate victim of taxidermy who comes to life and pulls himself loose of several nails that have trapped him to a piece of wood.

The stitches on his chest rip open in his struggle to get free and begin spilling his innards, which have been replaced with sawdust, so they leak as he moves.

His eyes are too high on his head and are always wide open, gleaming with insanity at everything within fifty feet of him.

For protection, he carries a pair of scissors, which he wields effectively against anyone the Queen of Hearts tells him to behead, including two Jacks.

The Jacks, and all the other characters that were playing cards in the Disney classic, are still cards, but their forms have been cut out of the cards, and the cards follow around their cutout mimicking their actions.

The Queen and King of Hearts have become card cutouts in this, but the queen still has her affection for croquet and executions.

Although the character design is unique and frightening by itself, don’t rent this movie expecting to get a horror flick. This movie is more of a warning for children about the effects of too much sugar before sleep and why children shouldn’t put everything they see into their mouths.

Everything Alice sees goes into her mouth, including ink, sawdust and strange cookies that she finds on the floor. But she seems to prefer eating chunks of wood.

Every time a character other than Alice says anything — and occasionally when Alice says something — Alice’s mouth fills the screen and she adds on “the White Rabbit said” or “the Mad Hatter said.”

It’s irritating, and the movie is dubbed into English so the lips never seem to move when they’re supposed to.

To make matters worse, the movie doesn’t have an option for subtitles.

In a sense, the movie is similar to Return to Oz. If a child watches it, they will be scarred for life. An adult will turn it into a drinking game.

Several scenes were very reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s last term in office.

A young woman kept saying “please wait for me” and then brushing off her dress with a disappointed look on her face.

Every time you see that, take a shot.

If nothing else, it is worth a look for the short “Darkness Light Darkness.” The film showcased clay animation at its best.

In any case, this movie does solve the age-old riddle of where socks disappear to: They become filled with air, gain life and begin making holes in the floor in an attempt to get to Wonderland.