Alice in Wonderland 2010
There is a lot of hype over this movie and it has enjoyed a surprisingly good box office. It seemed like since it was Tim Burton that it might be kind of dark for little kids, but too cartoony for most grownups.
Alice in Wonderland is not an easy book to adapt into a movie. And not because of the talking animals and imaginary animals. Those make it ideal for turning into a movie. Instead it is the lack of much of a story. Alice has a series of encounters with various characters, none of whom get much of a chance to develop. Even Alice doesn’t get a chance to develop since she is primarily just witnessing a lot of weird stuff going on around her.
Tim Burton has done a nice job realizing Wonderland, or Underland. Although I read the books years ago, I don’t know how closely the books were followed, but certainly the main characters are here that everyone knows. But somehow there needed to be more. There needed to be more of a moral, more character development, more of a plot to hang this cast of characters on. What is worse is that Burton seems to have given in to making the movie 3D and therefore some chases and other 3D elements seem tacked on. However at the beginning, before Alice falls into the rabbit hole, it is like watching Jane Eyre in 3D, and I had to wonder what the point was. With a number of 3D movies on the way, I feel like this is going to be a continuing problem of how to use 3D without 3D controlling how the movie is presented.
There is also a lot of hype about Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. He is unrecognizable in his getup and it had to be a fun role, with a character whose emotions run the full gamut from happy, crazy, sad, angry, brave, clever, etc. He even gets a dance number, but, again, there are a lot of elements, but they seem thrown together more than parts of a cohesive whole, just like the entire movie.
Alice in Wonderland is interesting to watch, but it won’t really grab you. Therefore I can only give it a B-.
Written: 14 Mar 2010