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The film's most prominent flaw is its pitch and tone; whether the movie was meant for kids or adults is completely indiscernible. It begins as a mystery: Mom and dad (Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman, respectively) are perplexed by the nervous habits their daughter Phoebe has picked up; she has also taken to spitting at other students. Some relief comes when the school's drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson, always welcome) casts Phoebe in a production of Alice in Wonderland alongside her buddy Jamie (Ian Colletti).
Barnz attempts to split the focus of the narrative between Phoebe's escalating outbursts while in rehearsals and her mother's misguided guilt and denial of the diagnosis given: Tourette's syndrome. The film is at once a weak family melodrama and an unimaginative fantasy concocted by a troubled pre-teen. If anything, the latter offers the far more fascinating moments simply because they allow the film's two strongest performers (Fanning and Clarkson) to interact.
For whatever inventiveness there is in the realistic self-denial of the mother and slow revelation of what Phoebe has, Wonderland is often devastatingly conventional in its structure and its drama. The parents clash over, amongst many things, their competing writing projects; he just landed a publishing deal while she is stuck in the mud. Phoebe's younger sister (Bailee Madison) wants a new sibling and doesn't understand why her older sis gets all the attention. And, of course, Jamie shows all the signs of a theatre-obsessed, blossoming homosexual as he chooses to play the Queen of Hearts.
Yet, there's Fanning, nearly as devout to Phoebe as Phoebe is to Alice and showing noticeable growth from her promising work in The Door in the Floor and last year's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It does seem just a bit ironic, however, that while her big sister regains some esteem with her admirable vocal work in this year's Coraline, another film about a girl and her fantasy world, young Elle is forced to wade through soggy bathos while carrying an entire film.
Like so many other overwrought feminist parables, Phoebe in Wonderland ends with an unendurable speech rote with clichés involving being yourself and not being scared to go against the grain. For all the love Barnz shows his protagonist, you would think he'd at least have the manners to pay attention when she's speaking to him.
Step on a crack, break your sister's back.
