Phoebe in Wonderland

Phoebe is a young girl devoted to the story Alice in Wonderland. She also acts in a strange way at times and this leads to the discovery that she suffers the early stages of Tourette's Syndrome. This is a disease which affects primarily those younger than 18, and is characterized by repetitive tics where some part of their body moves involuntarily.

Verbal tics such as grunting, throat-clearing, using obscene words, using obscene gestures, and barking may also be present.

The beginning of the film shows Phoebe to be an extremely intelligent girl. The other girls at school don't seem to like her, though. They actually bully her. The teachers at her school seem to be rather stupid, to me, and don't seem to know when bullying is going on right before their eyes.

A teacher has tryouts for Alice in Wonderland. All the girls want to be Alice, so you know right off that Phoebe will try out for the part, get it, and that will cause even more troubles with the other girls. She also keeps seeing another girl (Alice?). Her mother is writing a book on Alice in Wonderland.

Alice shows compulsive-obsessive behaviors.

She's sent to see a psychiatrist. Her own sister ends up disliking her. On the positive side, she gets the lead part in Alice in Wonderland and meets a boy who is nice to her. She tells him she can't control some of the things she does.

Around thirty minutes into the film she starts to have hallucinations about characters from Alice in Wonderland.

Phoebe gets worse and her obsessive-compulsive actions are starting to result in her getting physically injured.

A boy is playing the part of the Queen of Hearts and someone writes faggot on his costume.

The kids in her class start yelling at her about a gerbil that died, calling her a 'killer' and the teacher does absolutely nothing until Phoebe spits at someone and then and only then does she do something-against Phoebe. The principal pulls Phoebe out of the play but does absolutely nothing about the other students in the class who were bullying her.

Afterward she sees Humpty Dumpty. Later she calls the one boy a fag and purposely falls from a ladder. The principal talks to her and tries to dig up dirt on her drama teacher. The teacher gets fired, probably, or transferred at best, leaving the kids to carry on with the play on their own.

It's a very good film and a remarkable indictment against education as it is today, where toeing the politically correct line is of paramount importance, and caring for the students themselves is no longer of any importance. Finding someone to blame becomes another paramount importance for school administrators who run their own private fiefdoms, afraid to do anything that might upset those higher then themselves.


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