Alice in Wonderland

It is still worth the high price of the 3-D admission to see some of the amazing animation and design, but the writing is extremely boring and clumsy, and the performances cannot save it. Too many liberties were taken with the originals here, and in no way improve upon them, it only barely resembles either of Carroll's books in theme and some specific scenes. There are some "Disney moments" that literally set off a gag reflex as well.

The animation is quite stunning and wonderful though, as is the costuming and set design (in so much as there were sets and not just green screens, I'm sure SOME actual props were used). There are some clever elements that owe only to good visual design and direction I'm sure, as the only other clever bits in the dialogue were the parts directly lifted from the originals.

Tim Burton film version of Lewis Carroll's classic proves the special slickness of director to create weird worlds and strange characters . Alice (Mia Wasikowska)is 19-year-old and doesn't remember nothing about her former visit on Wonderland happened 10 years ago . Then she returns to the magical world from her childhood adventure, where she reunites with her old friends as Mad Hatter (Jhnny Depp), White Rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen), Chesshie Cat (Stephen Fry), Blue Caterpillar (voice of Alan Rickman) and learns of her true destiny: to end the Red Queen's (Helena Bonham Carter)reign of terror who helped by Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) is fighting her sister White Queen (Anne Hathaway)for the kingdom.

Moving rendering of Lewis Carroll classic with gimmick of blending live action and computer generator puppets and 3D animation . Riveting for its casting , but overall , roller-coaster spectacle. Most of the charm and wit remains from original story in this particular version . It results to be an amusing of somewhat aloof , storytelling of children classic with a magnificent three-dimensional visual effects team at its best bring to life the following : the Cheshire cat , Blue caterpillar, the Queen of hearts, March Hare , Tweedledum and many others. Breathtaking array of technical effects with impressive set pieces illuminate the Alice's full-blown adventures. The amazing plot is pure entertainment and with interesting screenplay based on characters created by Lewis Carroll , though here Alice acts as a heroine who combats dragons , monsters and of course the evil Queen of Hearts . Episodic characters as Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts are given major boost by strong personalities from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter . Spectacular final battle full of action , groundbreaking frames and fabulous fights . Overwhelming production design , though full of digital effects with impressive scenes and portentous images . Stirring musical score fitting perfectly to story by Danny Elfman and colorful cinematography by Dariusz Wolski . The motion picture lavishly financed by veteran producer Daryl F. Zanuck is originally directed by Tim Burton in his exceptional style. Rating : 6,5 acceptable rendition .

Other take on based on this vintage tale are the following : 1933 by Norman Z McLeod with Gary Cooper , Edward Everett Horton and Jack Oakie ; 1950 by Dallas Bower with Carol Marsh , Pamela Brown and Felix Aylmer ; 1951 by Walt Disney directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luke with voices of Sterling Holloway , Ed Wynn and Richard Haydn ; 1972 by William Sterling with Fiona Fullerton, Peter Sellers , Dudley Moore and Michael Crawford and TV version with Tina Majorino and Woopy Goldberg .

The setup of this movie sounds like the beginning of a good joke: "Tim Burton and Walt Disney walk into a bar..." You wouldn't think it possible, but it happened. Tim Burton, the master of dark, twisted fantasies where every story involves at least 1 corpse, teamed up with the studio known for bright pink bunnies and such.

The temptation is for Burton fans to expect a Burtonesque flick while Disney fans expect an accurate retelling of the 1951 Disney cartoon classic. Neither happened, not by a longshot.

What happened instead is something you just have to experience. Someone once told me that the root of beauty lies in contrast. A yellow flower in a field of yellow flowers isn't as beautiful as a yellow flower growing on a desolate battlefield of some war-torn desert. So with that in mind, this is a movie for people who can appreciate the contrast between Burton's sarcasm and Disney's innocence. I'll give you an example...

In the Disney cartoon, as well as Lewis Carroll's original story, the Red Queen runs around commanding "Off with his head!" at anyone who irritates her, but of course the Red King quietly follows behind whispering "You're pardoned" each time, thus saving the executioner a ton of gory axe blades. But in this version, in a brief but stark moment, we learn that the beheadings are quite real. And then bam, we quickly return to Disney territory where we are entertained by the banter of cute talking mice.

Literally, I rubbed my eyes, turned to the person sitting next to me and asked, "Wait... did we just see a bunch of decapitated heads??" Confusing at first, this volley between macabre & merry becomes the charm of this film. I should add that I counted at least 3 characters who got an eyeball disgorged. And yet, in Disneyesque fashion you never really feel a sense of menace; it's mostly in good fun.

I purposely didn't mention the plot until now because, to me, the story was secondary to the overall vibe of the film. But in case you're wondering, this is *not* a retelling of Disney's, Carroll's or anyone else's "Alice in Wonderland". This is sort of a sequel to the original where Alice, now 19 years old and about to get married, gets reconnected with her long forgotten adventure of youth. In that respect, it reminded me of how the movie "Hook" was sort of a sequel to "Peter Pan".

To me, that's the only department where this film lost a few points, because it felt like they were weaving too much of a story into a tale that was inherently a stream-of-consciousness that mimicked the randomness of a dream (Lewis Carroll himself invented the story on the spot while rowing Alice Pleasance Liddell and her sisters on a pond). This version follows more of a straighforward plot to defeat the bad guys, and in so doing, it got away from the dreamlike feeling of all other versions I've seen.

Johnny Depp... of course JD steals the show with his alternately endearing and terrifying Mad Hatter. He plays the role as someone suffering from severe PTSD which manifests itself in multiple personalities. There's his normal, gentle, lisping Hatter. And then there's his cruel, dark Scottish Highlander Hatter who sounds like Sean Connery just lost his place in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Honorable mention goes to Crispin Glover (Marty McFly's nerdy father in "Back to the Future") who plays a very chilling Jack of Hearts. And another honorable mention goes to Anne Hathaway who plays the angelic but somewhat ditzy White Queen.

Special effects are good for 2010 but a bit dated for today. The best effects are the subtle ones such as the way the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) was depicted as having an enormous, bulbous head. I also thought the "Drink Me, Eat Me" scene where Alice shrinks & grows was done very well.

In the end, although I had been expecting something of a trainwreck, I think the odd pairing of Burton & Disney was a success. So what's next? Maybe horror master John Carpenter ("Halloween") does a teencom with Lindsay Lohan & Jamie Lee Curtis called "Freaky Friday the 13th"?

I can usually find something to engage with and love in any film. It is a sort of challenge and promise to myself to do so -- as a choice in building a life. But this movie was a nadir in my adventure.

The Alice stories are special, special absolutely and special to me.

For many people, the stories are simply amusing nonsense for children, something to be fuzzily remembered in the same way as, say, Peter Pan or a Grimm's tale. But it is anything but. Carroll advanced our ability to speak to ourselves when he polished the story and sent it to us.

One can hardly expect someone like Burton, or anyone making a big budget Disney- distributed project to understand the material. But if you cannot understand the soul of what you are working with, you cannot leverage or extend it. You will need to count on your own talents instead. But Burton's strength is simple: the imposition of disordered fantasy on relatively ordered reality. He has exhausted this and was finished as an artist long ago.

By any measure other than color intensity, this is a failure as a movie. When Depp isn't given a complex structure to support, he can at least be amusing. Here, we have not even that.

What is normally considered nonsense sequences in the books are anything but. Dodgson was the foremost theory of logic in Europe at the time. Based in Oxford, he created the story for the child of the Dean, the creator of the then great Greek lexicon. Dodgson/Carroll was a master of the inadequacies of logic within the medium of everyday language.

All the "nonsense" sections are really a catalog of all the strange ways in which logic breaks when it encounters the way we linguistically form thoughts. Many of these parody assumptions Dean Liddell made in his understanding of Greek, mistakes that have saddled us with flawed scholarship on Aristotle and his logic. They are great, great fun: puzzles that even a 6 year old can laugh about.

This is where playful narrative originates. Only Shakespeare, Joyce and Lennon-NcCartney have had similar influence on our everyday thought. Karl Rove, for example, stands on the shoulders of Charles Dodgson's trickery.

None of this is conveyed. None, even though the Marx brothers made this safe territory for film humor.

Even the overall structure of the Alice stories is cool. Dodgson was not a pedophile, nor a drug addict, but he was something more dangerous to his soul. He was a charter member of Oxford's Psychical Society and a student of the inventor of mystical tarot, the self-named Court de Gebelin. The structure of the Alice stories, based on this, is our first structurally folded literature.

His ordination ruined by his guilt about this, he spent the remainder of his life writing a C S Lewis-like Christian allegory, Sylvie and Bruno to make amends. It was every bit as tepid and worthless as this. Every bit as wrong, as offensive to reality.

The movie also mixes in Jabberwocky. That was a poem written years earlier as a teen, to amuse his crotchety parson father, someone obsessed with the perversion of noble Saxon words by effete French. The poem is about the battle between true (Saxon) language and logical language.

(This comment is on the two-dimensional exhibition. I decided that the effects would be beowulf-like and cheaply distracting. I think I was right.)

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

When I decided to pay a premium price for a 3D blockbuster I expected a memorable picture. Besides the fact that Johnny Deep plays a great role as usual and H.B. Carter also has a nice performance the overall plot is dull and static. I believe that because they had to "improvise" and write a new story continuing the original one, the quality of the screenplay and plot decreased significantly. Although there are some funny moments and well written lines for the main characters, many of the others pass by unnoticed. Overall it was a nice, entertaining flick with average 3D effects, way below Avatar, and a simple,uncomplicated plot. Also it was rather short since I expected 120 minutes at least and not 100. Finally I would this movie performed below my expectations. A 7/10 would be a fair grade in my honest opinion.

Best, Stefan