Alice in Wonderland Review
by =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Prestonag=E9?= (prestonage AT gmail DOT com)April 2nd, 2010
Alice in Wonderland is nowhere near the masterpiece that was expected by many. It is hardly a film worth watching. While I am gracious for its visuals, its story never quite falls down the rabbit hole. It falls into the hole of every modern day fantasy cliché imaginable.
Tim Burton is, without a doubt, a very visual and imaginative director. And looking through his career, he is not a bad one either -over the top, and inconsistent, yes, but nevertheless good. Alice in Wonderland is the downside of his inconsistency. The script is just awful. It stays in reality for some of the time and goes to a knockoff of Lewis Carrols genius nonsense at other times.
The acting is not worth mentioning unless in a negative sense, which is what I intend to do. Mia Wasikowska may look like an Alice, but she is in no way personality wise one. She never actually feels the character and it is obvious. It is almost as if she is reading mundanely off an invisible screenplay. Almost all minor characters are just as bad. Johnny Depp has the best performance that I would describe as decent. However, the animated cat and caterpillar are well voice acted by Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman. They are characters that are quite full of fun. The cat is due more to his animation, and the caterpillar to his voice acting and pipe.
OK, now let me get to the last 30 minutes of the film. This distance in time is terrible. It is the most clichéd and overly stupid piece of children's fantasy I have sat through this year. As Alice is battling the jabberwocky, which is just an unimpressive dragon without fire, I literally thought to myself "Why can't it just squash her and we could get out of here?" Johnny Depp's dance made me lose respect for him and set Tim Burton to a new low. It was this dance that told you that Alice in Wonderland wasn't just a misconception of his thoughts, but that he has gone as mad as Mad Hatter in the good version. It was the turning point of the badness of the movie -the moment where you realize that this movie was supposed to be humorous. If you can't figure out that funny movies are meant to be laughed at, go see Alice in Wonderland. You'll enjoy it
2.9/10
Prestonagé
PrestoBix.com
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