Delayed Reaction: Alice

Premise: A woman escapes slavery to discover it’s the 1970s.

 

OK, at this point I have to ask. Do people think there are secret plantations in the U.S. where white people relive the antebellum South “glory days”? 2020 had the Janelle Monae movie Antebellum about that. Now Sundance has Alice about that too. One more and it’s a trend. I do get why it’s becoming a familiar setup. Slavery belongs in the horror genre and it’s so much easier to use slavery as an entry point to talk about modern race issues. You start with something we can all agree on: slavery is bad. Then you connect that to more mundane modern inequities.

 

I don’t think Alice does any of this particularly well. With the plantation parts early, it runs into the old adage that “all war movies are inherently pro-war”. Does depicting slavery condemn it or normalize it? It’s like using rape to motivate action in a movie. Done once, it’s effective. When it’s the hundredth time I’ve seen it in a movie, it starts to feel crass. That whole portion is there out of necessity, really. I don’t think the filmmaker has much interest in telling another slave narrative but has to in order to get to the big reveal that it’s really the 1970s.

 

Then, when Keke Palmer’s Alice discovers the world of the 1970s and bonds with Common as a truck driver who finds her, it’s far too rushed to make an impact. Palmer adapts to all parts of the modern world far too quickly. This is a “use your words” movie where none of the discussions are as thorough as they need to be. They all act like they are in a movie about a woman who escapes slavery in the 1970s rather than real people caught in the situation. If I was Common, I’d have many more questions. If I was Keke Palmer, every single thing about the world would terrify me. Instead, they breeze by it because they don’t have the time. This topic is much better suited for a limited series. There’s so much to foreground that when it actually gets to the discussion about race, slavery, and civil rights, it has to rush through all of it. This story needed a lot more time to breath. Or, better yet, I wonder if it could’ve thrown us into the middle with her escape.

 

I do appreciate how the movie tries to integrate aspects of Blaxploitation to almost make a ‘slave-sploitation’ movie. It’s easy to root for Keke Palmer. She’s not a performer that fits at all in a slave narrative, but she sure works with an afro, verbally dressing down people. The fact that I thought Common was in Harriet, the new Roots, 12 Years a Slave, Antebellum, and/or The Birth of a Nation probably doesn’t speak well for how these projects can blend together. He’s a nice POV character though. I just don’t think this movie is effective enough at any one thing, and the cumulative effect is an underwhelming movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend