Alice In Wonderland (remake)

Talk about buildup surrounding a film. Whoa! This would be the winner hands down for the past year. Every time a new trailer came out, it was all everyone could talk about. Tim Burton’s take on a classic Disney flick – it was destined to rock the cinematic world. I finally got around to seeing it this week. I didn’t see it on the big screen, or in IMAX, or in 3D. Nope. I saw it on blu-ray on a 52 inch LED. IT was beautiful, but I have a lot to say about everything else that I took in that night.

AIW Trailer (How have you not seen this?)

Ok, like I mentioned I was super excited to see this. Johnny Depp as the mad hatter, a new vision for the old story and film, etc, and I love Tim Burton and all of his films, even BIG FISH, which some people aren’t so pleased with. But this film struck a unique nerve in me. From the very first minutes I knew it was going to be something completely different and odd. Imagine that for a Burton film, right? And that is exactly what we got – a true Tim Burton film indeed.

I did like this film, but I didn’t love it by any stretch. IT felt so surreal to me, perhaps TOO surreal. I didn’t get caught up in the new wonderland and the majority of the characters seemed so far out that I couldn’t relate whatsoever. The film DID hurt me. I was hoping for something much more than what I got. Maybe if I would’ve seen it at the IMAX theatre or in 3D my experience would have been different, but I wasn’t overly impressed. The story was unimaginative and so narrow that it hurt to ride along with these characters on their mission to bring the white queen the sword from the red queen and then have them go back and kill the red queen with it – really? That’s all you can give us?? Maybe I’m being too hard on it, but the mission reminded me of TRANSFORMERS 2 where they had to run from point A in the desert to point B – have we really gotten this stagnant as a society to where that is considered entertaining?

Visually the film was beautiful, and I understand why the CG was so overexposed and vivid, but it made it harder to believe too at the end of the day. The story was terrible; the characters were interesting but not well developed. Give me BEETLEGUICE or BATMAN any day over this…

Rating: 7/10