GENRE: Adventure/Family/Fantasy
RATING: PG for fantasy violence
RUNTIME: 1 hour and 48 minutes
STARRING: Mia Wasikowska (In Treatment),
Johnny Depp (Charlie & the Chocolate Factory)
DIRECTOR: Tim Burton (Sweeny Todd)
WRITERS: Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast)
PLOT: Alice returns to Wonderland and learns she must defeat the Jabberwocky in order to end the reign of the Red Queen.
FIVE OBSERVATIONS:
1 This film is all about the breathtaking visuals. The art direction is outstanding. The Red palace is beautifully drawn and filled with monkeys doing all the heavy lifting. The White castle is also ornately drawn with chess piece aspects everywhere. Of course, Tim Burton also has dark edge to the forests and other locations in Wonderland.
2 Johnny Depp is fun as the The Mad Hatter in the beginning but becomes quite dull in the middle of the story. The March Hare is much more crazy and fun to watch. Talk about stealing thunder.
3 The story has some adventure elements but not much happens. Granted the original is not that amazing either. A girl falls down a hole, meets some strange people, ticks off a queen and runs back home. At least Tim Burton imported the Jabberwocky from Lewis Carroll’s poem into the mix.
4 I didn’t find myself rooting for Alice. As child, she had a sense of naivety and wonderment. As a 19-year-old, she just seems annoyed by her situation and that’s not fun to watch.
5 While there is some amazing coloring in this film, they needed to go back to the drawing board with Anne Hathaway’s White Queen. She was hard to look at with her white-washed hair and clothes accented with incredibly dark and off-putting lipstick. What a shame.
RECOMMENDATION: DVD
