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1 of 1 people found the above review helpful
I’m an Alice fan from way back. I’ve read the books, seen the movies, got the tee-shirt. So when I heard that Tim Burton was doing a version, I was curious but not elated: Tim Burton movies, in my opinion, are hit and miss. I expected this Alice to be more Tim Burton, and not so much Alice in Wonderland. The movie, however, is surprisingly not too much of either one – and it’s better for it.
In the movie, nineteen-year-old Alice makes an unexpected trip to Wonderland while pondering the direction of her life. She’s had this dream before, as a child, so this must be a dream too. But the people (using the broadest possible definition of “people”) she meets keep asking if she’s Alice. The one from before. Some elements of the movie are lifted straight from the books, particularly the poem “Jabberwocky”, but most of the story is original, proceeding at a respectable pace from beginning to end.
In fact, the only nit I had to pick as an Alice fan is that, while the poem is called “Jabberwocky”, the monster itself is called a Jabberwock. And it bothered me every single time they got it wrong.
The one aspect that raises this movie from charming but unremarkable fantasy to remarkable (so I will remark on it) is the special effects. No I’m not one of those people that think that special effects make or break a movie, but I was really impressed by just the entire visual spectrum of this film. The animals that looked real until they turned to talk to someone, Alice’s constantly changing size throughout the film and her interacting with the people (ibid) of different sizes around her, even the out-of-kilter landscape that the characters travel through are all well done. The line between reality and special effects was nicely blurred. I also liked that the 3D (I saw it in “fake” IMAX) was organic, and not the “in your face” 3D popular in schlocky horror sequels in the ‘80’s.
Although the publicity machine for this movie seems mighty impressed that Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter, I thought the acting was pretty decent across the board – no one performance stood out as being either particularly good, or particularly bad.
So, this was a enjoyable, fun little entry into the ever-growing variations of Alice in Wonderland. I wonder what will be next.
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