"Malice in Lalaland" has two major failures: among the worst Lewis Carroll adaptations/ripoffs ever attempted and unfortunately an incompetent attempt to resurrect 35mm format for filming porn.
I watched it for an obscure reason: I collect the videos of London's Harmony Films, an interesting banner that has spotlighted the work of talents like Tanya Hyde and Gazzman. The vanity pornographer "Lew Xypher" has released both his productions through Harmony, the previous one a Hyde imitation called "Hell Is Where the Party Is", so I bought them.
Here we have an absence of ideas or proper script -merely gonzo sex scenes, the requisite kinkiness already reflected in "Hell", and no knowledge of cinematic technique. The widescreen visuals try to impress, but in many scenes the lighting is poor, the focus off (read: out-of-focus) or terribly soft for no reason. Misusing 35mm cameras is hardly the solution to reversing the early retirement in porn (and in TV and most indie mainstream filmmaking), due to the ease, relative cheapness and flexibility of HD technology instead.
On to the content: Sasha Grey brings nothing, literally nothing, to the Alice = Malice role. Her super-stardom, including boosterism by Soderbergh, mystifies me - I would place her in the bottom 1 percentile of porn stars all-time, completely lacking distinction. The rest of the cast has little to do except Brit import Keni Styles as Chester Katz, hardly the Chesshire Cat one would expect to be lampooned. Styles' sojourn in Lalaland after his successful Euro career as virtually the only male Oriental star in porn, is self-indulgent here, as he heads up a feature-length BTS bonus in which he gets to hump Jenna Presley (lucky guy) off-camera, but on BTS camera, if you follow my drift.
In fact, this is worse than those dreaded porn parodies which are at the bottom of the XXX barrel, but do not preclude even crummier productions sneaking in below them. I truly hated the Sunny Lane "Alice" parody, with its ugliness and fake-punk approach, and the animated feature from the untalented folks at Adult Source Media was embarrassing..
But coming from outside of the porn mainstream Xypher brings a naiveté often seen in folks not steeped in the clichés of XXX product. His sex scenes are very poorly shot - one apologist who wrote a favorable IMDb assessment of this lousy film (and at least it can be called a film, being shot in 35mm though printed on video) explained away the Alan Stafford/Kagney Linn Karter humping in a car but seen awkwardly through windows as due to the cramped nature of the setting. Perhaps 35mm hampers such a shoot, but no one put a gun to Xypher's empty head forcing him to stage it there and that way in the first place. The man's incompetent.
Malice's non-adventures after she slides down a sort of chute to end up in a California desert wasteland are boring and pointless. No imagination or even riff on Carroll emerges. The excuse for a plot line has tiresome non-sex actor Dirty Fred pursuing her and killing off much of the cast, but he's terrible, sort of an amateur version of good old Max Headroom, not Max Hardcore, but rather Matt Frewer.
Requisite appearance in a bad movie of Ron Jeremy is a total waste, running a strip club and killing off some running time, but at least not involved in old age-sex. Cryptic elements like two sets of actors (one non-sex and other for sex) cast as Todd & Ted Tweed = Tweedledum/Tweedledee remain just that: arbitrary and cryptic. Use of animal heads during sex scenes is a fetish tradition also borrowed from the great Tanya Hyde and her fondness for Pig Heads in her BDSM features. The cheap costumes, like the unsatisfactory bare-chested dwarf rabbit outfit worn by mute Stephen Powers, are a turn-off. Having the evil Queen (artist formerly known as Queen of Hearts) become Andy San Dimas as Dr. Queenie, playing solitaire and humping in a morgue is a waste of Andy's considerable talent.
The who's who roster of XXX stars is wasted in general. The movie has various locations and vehicles transversing between them, but ultimately goes nowhere, ending precisely where it began, in an asylum which presumably represents the residence Xypher escaped from.
