My mom read the Lewis Carrol story to me when I was really young in the early 80s. Alice's adventures were truly wonderful, original and frightening back then. I remember seeing the Disney cartoon and that brought a whole new creepy visual aspect to the story that I really appreciated.
Fast forward to this new film and it just feels like we're retreading old ground. By this time we've all seen various versions of the Alice story. Here, Alice is older and going back to Wonderland, but does that bring anything new? Well, we have the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, the Tweedles and so and so on (all stuff we've seen before). Johnny Depp is put in a ridiculous over the top costume as the Mad Hatter, but he manages to make the character interesting by giving us a truly mad person who switches between accents and personalities. The film's conclusion is an inevitable action sequence that seems to have no purpose, but to give us an action sequence. The film could have been about Alice finding her true self through wonderland. It could have had a redemption for the Red Queen as she's a sad woman with an enlarged head that just needs to be loved. Instead we get another banal good vs. evil story with the main character triumphing at the very end. Sure it all looks very pretty and is technically an achievement. Yet, in these post-Lord of the Rings and Avatar times we live in, this just another crazy, kooky looking fantasy film full of pretty sets and CGI (which is truly jarring in the case of Crispin Glover's digitally stretched out character).
Two and half stars **1/2
Trailer
Director - Tim Burton
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