Alice Somewhere...Not Quite Wonderland...

I was disappointed that after all the advertising, excitement, and anticipation, Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland failed to deliver on so many grounds...I don't even know what the purpose of releasing an IMAX 3-D version was, since there was nothing that impressive about the graphics. The Hatter and the Red Queen (who actually was more like the Queen of Hearts) were of course wonderful, and the Cheshire Cat might be the only cool "graphical wonder" in the whole thing, but it felt like a mediocre children's movie, rather than a fantasy masterpiece coming alive under the direction of someone from whom we have come to expect so much.

So they mixed and matched the two books, which is OK...But something was not there...I understand they wanted to do something different and not stay ultimately true to the original versions, but a grown up Alice just didn't cut it for me. There was not much of that "wonderment" and confusion one would expect from Alice. She's in "Wonderland" (or Underland) for crying out loud, couldn't she at least show some kind of emotion? She talked like she was made of stone...And where the hell did the riddles and rhymes and philosophical ponderings that make Alice, Alice, go? I think half the problem was that the running time was too short to get too deep on the theme. But then the whole thing lost its essence. This was Alice in Wonderland minus the soul. And don't even get me started on the "scenery"...I expected something much more...It wasn't as "quirky" and dark as one would expect from Tim Burton.

For me, this is certainly not the best adaptation of Alice and definitely not the best one of Burton's brilliantly dark and fascinating movies. But then again maybe I should be glad I saw it at the movie theater because I doubt I would have watched it to the end at home...