Paradox Alice

The acting and story were great. The effects for such a low-budget production were spectacular in my opinion. I feel that this story would have been even better if there had been more time to show/explore the character development (it had a somewhat "rushed" feel to it). The only nit-pick I have with this movie were some (very) minor issues with real-life physics as portrayed in the movie, but they did not take away from the story at all. The DVD arrived in a professional looking / commercial DVD case, with a nice-looking label. The disc arrived with a couple fingerprints and problems playing in one of my DVD players, even after cleaning. Later, I discovered issues with disc navigation in what I assume to be the second layer of the disc, as if the disc was burned too fast (skips, freezes, stuttering, and perpetual repeat of a small section). If I just let it play from the beginning, it will work just fine on all but one (the oldest) of my DVD players. I'm thinking that this is just a problem with my disc... but in case it is not, it is listed here for your consideration.

I just got done watching this movie and for the record, I am glad I rented it. It's definitely worth a look see, provided you go in knowing what to expect. This is a B-movie. Think SyFy Channel, not Showtime. Right from the start, it's obvious from the introduction that the premise of this movie serves as a hand wave to allow the rest of the plot to seem plausible. That in of itself is a bit of a failing, but one easily overlooked when you view the previous works of Mako Pictures and all those involved. There's only so many ways you can have three guys survive the end of the world. Watching this movie, it becomes very clear how the producers chose to spend their money. The film takes place aboard a Water Tanker vessel, the USS Red Queen, though from the inside that's not too apparent. The interior shots look more like a series of bunkers than a spaceship. Lighting is minimal all over the ship and the only visible technology consists of a control room filled with a number of small CRT monitors, a single valve in a corridor, some wires in a crawlspace, and the microwave in the break room. The CGI effects used to create the external shots of the ship are quite dated by Hollywood standards, being on par with those of the mid-90s such as Babylon 5 or Hypernauts. One of the highlights of the film, from a technical standpoint at least, is the transformation scene. It's obvious the bulk of the special effects budget went into making Ethan Sharrett turn into Jeneta St. Clair. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they spent more money on this four-minute transformation than they did on all the external shots in the film. It is by far, the best depiction of physical gender transformation I have seen anywhere (including "Dr. Jekyll, Ms. Hyde," "Zerophilia," and that Mountain Dew Commercial featuring the Dude with the Magic Car Clicker). The characters in the movie are a bit bland and a bit two dimensional. The main character, Alex Foxe is the ship's second in command. He is originally portrayed as a playboy and womanizer, which makes it almost cliche that he would be the one who finds himself transformed into a woman. Once transformed, Foxe at first goes through an impossibly quick adjustment period before slipping completely into his role as a woman. This too is hand-waved by Foxe's comment that she can feel herself continuing to change mentally. The ship's captain, Jim Gray, serves as the "Good Guy" of the movie. He and Foxe share a comradery following some incident that occurred prior to the start of the film. Following the destruction of the Earth, he begins cutting himself and showing signs of PTSD, Dementia, or Alzheimer's, I'm really not certain which. It's his delusions that make him begin to see his dead wife in the place of his best friend, and leads to Foxe accepting the name "Alice." Lieutenant O'Byrne starts off as the young newbie aboard the ship, being both patronized and encouraged by the rest of the crew. He is highly religious and, following the destruction of Earth, advances his faith to psychotic levels. He becomes convinced that God has a plan, and that he is a prophet for the divine. What really irritates me about this character is he is written as the ship's science officer. Religious Zealotry aside, one would think anyone with even a modicum of scientific understanding would realize that three people - two male, one female - is not a sufficient genetic base with which to restart a species. He does have two shining moments however; the first being when he discusses betta fish and how they would kill each other if a female was entered into their habitat, thus foreshadowing the rest of the movie. The second, is when his head explodes, which frankly happened far too late in the movie, but did serve to set up Foxe for a great one-liner: O'Byrne: "You don't have the balls to press that button." [Foxe presses the button, causing O'Byrne's head to explode] Foxe: "I don't need them." The other two characters on the ship are barely characters. Kat Spencer is the ship's medical officer. She plays the only woman on the crew and is torpedoed through the abdomen and killed after maybe six lines because you can't have a movie about how "life finds a way" when there's a way sitting across the table. Really, her character's biggest contribution to the plot is that, by dying, there's no one to offer a scientific explanation as to WHY Foxe turns into a woman (since the aforementioned science officer was really just the expert on fish and headsplosions). All we're left with is a Wikipedia entry on Protandry and O'Byrne's belief that this is God's plan. Lastly, there's Red, the ship's AI. I would seem they were trying to create a kind of HAL dynamic with her, but the fact that her only interface with the crew is a set of wall-eyed binoculars that make it difficult to take her seriously. In truth, she seems to be more unstable than Gray. She relieves Gray of command before he's even shown signs of mental breakdown, siting his ignoring a core meltdown warning (a meltdown that never actually happens) and creative use of the ship's landing thrusters to get off Europa. She threatens to seal him in the bridge and cut off his oxygen when he gets aggravated at her decision to remove him from command, yet she does nothing to stop or even warn off O'Byrne when he kills Gray tries to rape Foxe. The last scene suggests this is intentional, as she is for some reason delivering the now pregnant Foxe to a group of shadow aliens enroute to a new garden world. I honestly cant figure out why the shadow aliens are there. It's as if the Writers were trying to Shyamalan the ending in order to make room for the possibility of a sequel, maybe? I don't know. For a movie that spent an hour and forty-eight minutes being about how life adapts and the various reactions from the crew to the trauma of watching your whole planet blow up, to cram aliens in during the last two minutes before the credits roll seems counter-productive. In the end, this movie makes about as much sense as Sharktopus. And really, that's the category it belongs in. SyFy could have made this movie with ten times the budget and come up with the same product. If you're looking for a blockbuster, go to the theater. But if, like me, you enjoy watching Made-for TV movies just to see how good a film can be made on a mediocre budget, then Paradox Alice is worth the price of Rental. Enjoy it for what it is.

"A cornerstone in the new paradigm of outer space Sci-Fi movies like Clooney and Bullock's Gravity, Paradox Alice sets off from Europa in an epic lost in space odyssey." I thought I would start with that quote since it is the description posted for this title. Frankly even mentioning Gravity, Clooney or Bullock in the same sentence as this cinematic abortion is libelous. The only thing it MAY have in common with any of the three is that related in some vague way to space. As a number of reviewers have correctly noted, the starting mission premise is absurd but that pales in stupidity to what follows. [SPOILER ALERT] Actually nothing could spoil your "enjoyment" of this thing but I had to give the warning. When the intrepid crew returns to Earth with their treasure of four pitiful super tanks of clean water which will supposedly save the planet in some preposterous fashion, the encounter a heavy meteor cloud that the lame computer pilot couldn't see for some unknown reason and lose their one female crewman. The remaining three males are shocked to discover that Earth has been blown apart by some never described catastrophe relating to so called nuclear stockpiles. What is shown next is their view of the former planet appearing like a moon split in several pieces. But then the fun truly begins, starting with lament for the end of mankind soon remedied by a quick but tortured spontaneous transformation of one of the men to a woman. Rapidly thereafter (but not nearly rapidly enough), the two remaining males begin fighting over the new woman who falls for one of them (her former military buddy). The jilted other male (a religious nut job no less), fashions an electronic shock collar powerful enough to blow a head off the shoulders (which happens twice later). You couldn't make this up, but some fool did. The only redemption for the writer is that he has to compete for the honor of being the worst part of the production. Unlike Gravity or near any movie with Clooney or Bullock, the production values are terrible. The effects appear to have been cobbled together in someones garage (they likely were) and the acting descends to new levels. Some say Plan 9 From Outer Space is the worst Sci Fi movie every made. Well it may have been but not now. One star for this is a gift. Save your time and money unless you simply want to laugh at how bad a movie can be.