*** Official ALICE IN WONDERLAND Review Thread

To me, this is a lousy movie devoid of humor, a pulse, interesting plot or characters.  Johnny Depp phones in an underwritten role for the Mad Hatter.  I didn't much care for Mia Wasikowska as Alice, and that's a big problem for a movie titled "Alice in Wonderland".  Even Helen Bonham Carter as the Red Queen felt like the big headedness of the character got the best of her in this role.  Anne Hathaway as the White Queen was oddly disturbing to me, as she just doesn't look all that great with the white hair and the solid black eyebrows.

Remember those old fashion electric football games where you put your "players" in some formation on either side of the line of scrimmage, and then the playing field vibrates so that the player move in some random manner in the hopes of advancing the player with the football?  There are some scenes in the movie just like that, it felt aimless at times, it was totally a dud of a movie.  I don't know if Tim Burton had too many notes from Disney execs or what, but whatever time and energy they spent on the world building of Wonderland, they did not spend a 1/10 of it on actual story and character building, and it's a lifeless effort, and a disappointing one.

I give it 1 star, or a grade of D.

Patrick has pretty much summed up my thoughts.  I went this afternoon and reserved posting until I saw someone else post some thoughts, because the words just left me.

First, this film is NOT Alice in Wonderland or really connected with any of the written content, this is an entirely original take using the setting and characters.  As such, the film felt as though it was insanely short on plot innovation, and it was missing any real purpose.

Once I got about 30 minutes in, I realized that the recent SciFi Channel "Alice", another original retake on the storyline was a better and more creative concept then this.  The film has a storyline that never really connected with me.  I just couldn't be interested.

The actress who plays Alice is a very beautiful girl, and the cast looks good.  Some of the 3d effects are interesting, but this is a film where the 3d effects just can't cover for the complete lack of story. 

This film also had, IMHO, an incredibly bad second act.  The middle sectionof this film drags so badly that I must have checked my watch at least three times, and it just felt forced.  Just a really bad middle of this film.

 

D-

Despite the impressive effects, the plot was pretty weak.  If you consider the numerous attempts to film Alice in Wonderland and the sad fact that really none of them work, I guess you have to give them some points for trying.  But essentially they just took characters out of the two books and stuck them in a female empowerment storyline.  The opening and closing "real" sequences are very awkward and obvious set ups for the fantasy world where most of the action takes place.  The big battle set piece at the end also seems out of place.  I would agree that it would appear several elements here were probably mandated by the suits at Disney to make it more palatable to modern audiences.  The Alice books really do not have  conventional plots... they are episodic and dream like.... which make them difficult to work as narrative films.
And... by the way... the new film's finale of
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
is simply ridiculous.  

I thought it was an enjoyable movie....visually pleasing, at the very least, and very Tim Burton-esque. I liked the 3-D a lot as well - I definitely thought it added to the movie. The performances were all pretty good - thought Helena was a standout, and the voice actors were solid (Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat was my personal favorite) - and thought Mia held her own. As for the story - I agree, it's pretty hard to translate the book into a narrative film - so I think Burton did as best he could...the underlying theme of Alice's personal journey was quite good, IMO, though maybe not developed or carried out as much as it could have been.