Alice in Wonderland(2010) Review

Alice in Wonderland (2010) Review

Relax your concerns, I am no longer publishing a million reviews a week. I know I just published one film review this week, but I just had to be the first person here to review Alice in Wonderland. So just to clarify, there won’t be a third movie review this week.

Normally, people tend to avoid anything with Tim Burton’s name on it, especially after his remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And yes, that fact scared me as well when I first heard of the film. So did he do it?

The quality of this movie depends heavily on your expectations for it. Many people actually had high expectations for Alice, and if you are one of those people, I am afraid you should really lower them. If not, then you may be pleasantly surprised at the result. I would put this film right in the middle of good and bad. I must admit it did exceed my low expectations, although not by very much.

First of all, this is not a remake of the first Alice in Wonderland book, in case you did not know. In actuality, it is the sequel. A much older Alice returns to Wonderland (or rather “Underland” as Absolem reveals it to really be) and finds it in a state of despair, as she must defeat the Red Queen and slay an evil monster called The Jabberwocky. That is what I do not like about marketing and advertising of movies and games these days; what happened to numbering and/or subtitles?
The acting, for some parts, was not bad. I think that the actress who portrayed Alice did well in the role, and the voice acting for the animated characters was mostly pleasant I shall say. So of course some of you are asking: “How did Johnny Depp perform as the Mad Hatter?” Well, if you didn’t like him as Willy Wonka in Charlie, you might find his portrayal of the Mad Hatter even more repulsing. Personally, I think he did an okay job but…maybe they could have found someone else? Who? I do not know but…he was rather unfitting for the role for some reason. As for Helen Bonham Carter’s portrayal of the Red Queen, I personally thought she did a pretty decent job. Anne Hathaway also did a decent portrayal of the White Queen. Overall, I suppose that all portrayed their respective characters well, and no complaints on the acting, really.

Concerning the CGI, I felt that it was strong at some points and weak in others of this film. I am not one of those graphics lovers who only really cares about CGI of course, but if you are going to have a movie that is full of it, at least do it well to make the flick pleasant to look at, you know? But overall, I suppose it was. At least it doesn’t appear that they half-assed it like in G.I.Joe: Rise of the Cobra.

The screenplay I should say was executed well; unlike Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there aren’t really any awkward jokes. While the film is supposed to be whimsical and delightful it’s not really a full fledged comedy like it appeared they tried to make Charlie. It contains some riddles and everything we love, and I think that Lewis Carroll (author of the original book) would be satisfied if he were to read the screenplay. The original characters from the books are in it, Absolem, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and even what appear to be new ones. I did not really read the sequel book however, so I cannot judge how close it stayed.

All in all, Alice in Wonderland is a pretty fun popcorn flick that you go to the movies on Friday or Saturday night to see with friends for fun, but nothing to really be taken seriously. Or most highly, as a film to take kids to if you are babysitting. Again, I would lower my hopes if you have high hopes but it was a bit better than I anticipated, and I was pleasantly surprised. But only a little.

EDIT: okay the reason I knocked the score down is because I did not mean to rate the film that highly. I thought that 7 was mediocre since 7/10 is 70% which is a C-. But since 7 here is considered good, I reduced the score to what I really thought.