The representation and dissection of OCD and social anxiety is fairly commendable, but 'Phoebe in Wonderland' muddles its messages and comes off as unexpectedly unpredictable in a wholly unintentional way. Things happen in this movie in such a randomised way and several forms of commentary are fighting for the viewer's attention that nothing sinks in as hard as it should.

Information about the film will be incomplete without indicating the official website: https://phoebeinwonderland.com/

I've been watching this movie since I was 5, I've always loved it. I viewed it so many times I can quote most of it. Though some cinematic decisions could've been better, this is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

The film's strength lies in its candid portrayal of a young girl afflicted and in Elle Fanning's Phoebe. Full review later.

A brilliantly emotional film about a young girls struggle with severe OCD. The acting was wonderful, with a great storyline to accompany.

aile filmi gibi gözükse de bildi?imiz dram bence. yapmas? gerekenle yapmak istedikleri aras?nda bocalayan bir çocu?un hayat? anlama çabalar? ve büyüme sanc?lar?. di?er taraftan iyi bir anne olmak için kal?plarla özgün olmak aras?nda kalan bir annenin ç?rp?n??lar?.

good story but not for kids

Elle Fanning is a good actress after all, the movie made me think, loved it

In a reversal of the usual movie trend, the child actors, not just elle fanning are the best part of this film. The movie visually looks nice enough & the kids give solid performances, only to be dragged down by the more experienced members of the cast.

The film's strength lies in its candid portrayal of a young girl afflicted and in Elle Fanning's Phoebe. Full review later.

The film's strength lies in its candid portrayal of a young girl afflicted and in Elle Fanning's Phoebe. Full review later.

A creative and ambitious film that is just way too hit-and-miss for my taste. The progression of the story is really choppy and unsure of itself. I must say though that Fanning delivered a knockout performance.

Yeah, Because It's All About Her Mom In the end, this movie actually turned out to have a pretty decent message, but the whole rest of it leading up to the end made me so angry that I barely even got to the end. I was angry pretty consistently throughout the movie, because most of the garbage the characters was spewing was garbage I've heard in all sincerity over and over again. I've seen plenty of movies that have that message, and I usually turn them off. What kept me watching this one was the determination that I was going to get all the way through it and actually write down my anger. And to be honest, that hasn't changed. That they actually acknowledge, five minutes before the end, that it's just possible that this little girl might have a real problem isn't good enough to make up for all the damage they do through the rest of the picture. I'm really displeased with it, and I hate that so many people are missing the really serious problems. Phoebe Lichten (Elle Fanning) is a strange child. She has a hard time controlling her actions. She washes her hands until they bleed because, as she says, she has to wash them a certain number of times. She has little rituals that she performs, and she isn't always capable of stopping herself from saying things that come to mind. Her sister, Olivia (Bailee Madison) can't stand to be around her. Her father, Peter (Bill Pullman), is spending most of his time working on a book that's about to be published. Her mother, Hillary (Felicity Huffman), is supposedly turning her thesis into a book of her own, but she never works on it. And then one day, Miss Dodger (Patricia Clarkson) appears in Phoebe's life. She is going to be putting on a play of [i]Alice in Wonderland[/i] (though, as per usual, it's also crossed heavily with [i]Through the Looking Glass[/i]), and Phoebe decides that she will try out for it. She gets the part of Alice, and as long as she's playing Alice, everything is fine. But her problems offstage are only getting worse. I'm going to go back to one phrase in that summary, here, which is pretty much a direct quote from the movie. She [i]has[/i] to wash her hands a certain number of times, so she has washed them until they bleed. She's doing some ritual on the stairs that involves jumping and counting, and she keeps it up even when she's scraped her knees bloody. Her mother compares this to having believed when [i]she[/i] was a child that, if she didn't count all the telephone poles as they drove, they would crash. And it's true that kids have weird little rituals, but it's also true that almost every mental illness is some odd behaviour that everyone does only turned up beyond normal levels. Her child is making herself bleed, and she says the doctor (Peter Gerety) is trying to make being a child diagnosable. This, to me, means that she's not really seeing what is happening with her child, because I can't imagine anyone's seeing what is happening to Phoebe and not being worried about it. Heck, I was able to predict some of her behaviour by knowing how mental illness works! Her mother also makes it all about her to a level that really bothered me. Her thesis is something to do with Alice, and she insists that the reason Phoebe latches onto the play so much has to do with losing her mother's attention or some such. That the play is important to Phoebe because Wonderland is important to Hillary. Olivia says that Phoebe gets whatever she wants, but I think it's more that it's easier for Hillary to project her own feelings and desires onto the damaged child. The healthy one resists it more. She takes Phoebe out of therapy at least in part because she doesn't like the answers the therapist gives to her questions, and even though Phoebe is a child, there's a limit to how many questions of Hillary's he's allowed to answer. His patient is still Phoebe, and that's where his responsibility lies. As it happens, he also seems like a pretty caricatured therapist to me, but that's a different problem. Even a more realistic therapist wouldn't give Hillary the answers she's looking for. To be honest, most of the adults in Phoebe's life are pretty lousy. Her father doesn't care about his wife's work enough to reread the books, even after his daughter is made the lead in the play. (He thinks the poppies are in Alice, not [i]The Wizard of Oz[/i]!) All of her teachers except Miss Dodger are that horrible kind of teacher who appears in any fiction where we need to feel that the child's natural intelligence and whimsy is being oppressed; her third-grade teacher (Madhur Jaffrey) has exactly the same dumb rules as they've had for two years at that point. The principal (Campbell Scott) is ineffectual and doesn't seem to like doing his job anyway. He's also out to get Miss Dodger. Though there, I don't blame him; she's the adult we're supposed to like, and I really, really didn't. Yes, she's right to be irritated by all the girls who were so convinced they'd make a perfect Alice. However, she's actively rude to Phoebe at Phoebe's audition (and why are they scheduled half-hour audition blocks?), and she doesn't really seem to understand how to direct a play. I think we're supposed to like her fanciful nature, but I was already wondering why she wasn't preventing the kids from having access to that catwalk.

"Phoebe in Wonderland" is one of the most sincere stories that I have ever seen. It begins with childlike innocence as we are transported into the mind of young Phoebe, a girl who loves and imagines the characters of "Alice in Wonderland." The story takes an unexpected turn when she becomes impulsive in her speech and self-destructive in her actions, the apparent victim of Tourette Syndrome. My respect for Elle Fanning has grown exponentially after seeing her tackle this complex role at the age of 10. I have always felt that she was riding on the coattails of her sister but in this film, she showed true acting finesse. The subtlety of her symptoms combined with her heart-wrenching emotional meltdown in bed make this one of the best performances by a child actor that I have ever seen. The film boasts one impressive scene after another and once things start to fall apart, it becomes a series of high-emotion scenes without much of a break in between. Another scene worth noting comes as Felicity Huffman (Phoebe's mom) pours her heart out to a therapist. This long monologue is uncut as the camera slowly zooms in on her tears from across the room over the course of a few minutes. It is an incredible scene as we symbolically move from the outside perspective of the therapist to the inside of the mother's heart. This scene is then trumped by Patricia Carkson (the drama teacher)'s monologue about boys performing the greatest female roles in the time of Shakespeare. This story left me with a sense of vulnerability as a family is pulled apart by the stress caused by their daughter's uncontrollable behavior. The film will speak to any person who has or wants to have children, showing the amount of love and selflessness that is required to care for a child when the unexpected arises. "Phoebe in Wonderland" is one of the most underrated films out there and, while the thematic material is tough to swallow, the reward is well worth it in the end.

It was a slow movie, but interesting from a child with mental illness perspective.

Snowstorm Netfix day- This is the type of movie I love. It is about the performance because the story is so tied to the emotions of the characters. Saying what you feel... having to say what you feel.... being unable to stop yourself from feeling how you feel. .. I don't recall Elle Fanning in a movie before. I think I'll notice her in everything from now on. Patricia Clarkson & Campbell Scott listed in the cast is a good indicator for me, their choices of films never seem to let me down.

Obviously a vehicle to showcase Elle Fanning's admittedly impressive acting chops. But the movie is lethargic and depressing. There's just too much going on, and the lightness of momentary flights of imaginative fancy can't get it off the ground. Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman seem lost here as well.

Great performances bolster this movie about family relationships and growing up cultivating power of imagination. Gets too downbeat and depressing at times, but reveals a lot of painful truths about parenting and balancing personal and professional life.

Felicity Huffman annoyed me in this movie..she just didn't want to see the signs. However, the movie was wonderful.

Bold and ambitious but not much else. I enjoyed Elle Fanning's performance but overall the film fails to grab me. It's premise is strong as well as the script's foundation but it shows so much incompetence from the filmmaker. It's as if the creators of this mixed bag don't know what they are trying to say. An adequate film that delivers somewhat but overall sinks fairly fast.