Best part of the movie.

If I had to review Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in one word, I would chose the word: boring. With a few more words in the review I could say that it was boring, with a side of boring for dipping. (I saw it in 2D, but I don’t think all of the 3D in the world would have made it any better.)

I consider myself a Tim Burton fan, and I think I was one of the few to actually enjoy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There have been very few misses when it comes to my enjoyment of his films. Alice was a definite miss.

I wasn’t sure what to expect by way of the plot, but it was not really a reinterpretation of the classic story as I had hoped it would be. It was more like some sort of strange sequel or alternate reality.

I found myself unable to care about any of the characters. Every performance was lackluster. Depp definitely captured the “mad” in Mad Hatter, but there were times when I couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying. There is a line between nonsense words and mumbling unintelligibly.

The White Queen (Hathaway) was supposed to be very light and ethereal, but she just came across as trying too hard. Carter’s performance as The Red Queen didn’t feel like anything new or fresh. Alice (Wasikowska) didn’t really strike me one way or another. The performance of Crispin Glover as Stayne was surprisingly better than most of the cast. At least he was effectively creepy.

The effects in the film were okay, but I found them more distracting than anything. The one stand out piece was the Cheshire Cat. He was beautifully rendered, and the character interpretation was overall marvelous. (Stephen Fry was the perfect voice actor for it.) I could have done with a lot more of him in the movie.

The ending of the film felt flat and uninspired. I think we were supposed to feel as if the character of Alice had grown because of her experiences, but the character development was so weak that there was never that sense of real life-changing accomplishment.

Even though the plot was not very true to the books, some of the elements and pacing felt very close. However, where the books draw you into the nonsense the movie pushes away.

I really don’t have much else to say. There was a point somewhere during the movie where I started spacing out from boredom in favour of visiting my own Wonderland. It was sadly more interesting than the one flickering across the screen.

Final Score: 2 out of 5.

I know that this trailer has been the source of much excitement lately, but I only now got around to watching it. Honestly, I’m not all that impressed or interested.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big Tim Burton fan and this film has an amazing cast filled with actors that I love and respect. I just can’t seem to muster much enthusiasm at all.

Alice in Wonderland is a huge and interesting project to tackle. There are two books filled with an amazing assortment of creatures and encounters. Many of the elements in the stories are comprised of memorable amphigory and could easily be interpreted a number of ways.

The animated Disney version of Alice is charming. Everything I’ve seen from the Burton film just looks creepy. I LOVE creepy, but I don’t know if I like it applied the way it has been for this movie. The Mad Hatter looks like something that could give clowns nightmares. I also get the feeling from the trailer that he plays a much larger role in the film than he does in the book. I think it would be nice to see Depp in a smaller, but no less interesting role rather than running the show. I also don’t understand the freakishly huge head on the Queen of Hearts. It makes me think of some advertisements that were running a while back (for shoes I think), in which the model’s heads had been similarly warped.

Maybe I’m nitpicking since Alice in Wonderland is about nonsense. I will probably go and see the movie regardless, I just sincerely hope it doesn’t get so caught up in it’s strangeness that it forgets to be a good movie.