Ok, Alice in Wonderland BY ROGER EBERT / March 3, 2010 Cast & Credits Mad Hatter Johnny Depp Alice Mia Wasikowska Red Queen Helena Bonham Carter White Queen Anne Hathaway Knave Crispin Glover And the voices of: Caterpillar Alan Rickman Cheshire Cat Stephen Fry White Rabbit Michael Sheen Bayard Timothy Spall Jabberwocky Christopher Lee Disney presents a film directed by Tim Burton. Written by Linda Woolverton, based on the books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated PG (for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and a smoking caterpillar). As a young reader, I found Alice in Wonderland creepy and rather distasteful. Alice's adventures played like a series of encounters with characters whose purpose was to tease, puzzle and torment her. Few children would want to go to wonderland, and none would want to stay. The problem may be that I encountered the book too young and was put off by the alarming John Tenniel illustrations. Why did Alice have such deep, dark eye sockets? Why couldn't Wonderland be cozy like the world of Pooh? Watching the 1951 Disney film, I feared the Cheshire Cat was about to tell me something I didn't want to know. Tim Burton's new 3-D version of "Alice in Wonderland" answers my childish questions. This has never been a children's story. There's even a little sadism embedded in Carroll's fantasy. It reminds me of uncles who tickle their nieces until they scream. "Alice" plays better as an adult hallucination, which is how Burton rather brilliantly interprets it until a pointless third act flies off the rails. It was a wise idea by Burton and his screenwriter, Linda Woolverton, to devise a reason that Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now a grown girl in her late teens, revisiting a Wonderland that remains much the same, as fantasy worlds must always do. Burton is above all a brilliant visual artist, and his film is a pleasure to regard; I look forward to admiring it in 2-D, where it will look brighter and more colorful. No artist who can create these images is enhancing them in any way by adding the annoying third dimension. But never mind that. He brings to Carroll's characters an appearance as distinctive and original as Tenniel's classic illustrations. These are not retreads of familiar cartoon images. They're grotesques, as they should be, from the hydrocephalic forehead of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) to Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), who seem to have been stepped on. Wonderland itself is not limited to necessary props, such as a tree limb for the Cheshire Cat and a hookah for the Caterpillar, but extends indefinitely as an alarming undergrowth beneath a lowering sky. Why you can see the sky from beneath the earth is not a fair question. (The landscape was designed by Robert Stromberg of "Avatar.") When we meet her again, Alice has decidedly mixed feelings about her original trip down the rabbit hole, but begins to recall Wonderland more favorably as she's threatened with an arranged marriage to Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill), a conceited snot-nose twit. At the moment of truth in the wedding ceremony, she impulsively scampers away to follow another rabbit down another rabbit hole and finds below that she is actually remembered from her previous visit. Burton shows us Wonderland as a perturbing place where the inhabitants exist for little apparent reason other than to be peculiar and obnoxious. Do they reproduce? Most species seem to have only one member, as if nature quit while she was ahead. The ringleader is the Mad Hatter, played by Johnny Depp, that rare actor who can treat the most bizarre characters with perfect gravity. Whoever he plays (Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, Ichabod Crane), he is that character through and through. This is a Wonderland that holds perils for Alice, played by Wasikowska with beauty and pluck. The Red Queen wishes her ill, and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) wishes her well, perhaps because both are formed according to the rules of Wonderland queens. To be sure, the insecure White Queen doesn't exhaust herself in making Alice welcome. The Queens, the Mad Hatter, Alice, the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and presumably Tweedledee and Tweedledum are versions of humans; the others are animated, voiced with great zest by such as Stephen Fry (Cheshire), Alan Rickman (Absolem the Caterpillar), Michael Sheen (White Rabbit), Christopher Lee (Jabberwocky), Timothy Spall (Bayard) and Barbara Windsor (Dormouse). The film is enchanting in its mordant way until, unfortunately, it arrives at its third act. Here I must apologize to faithful readers for repeating myself. Time after time I complain when a film develops an intriguing story and then dissolves it in routine and boring action. We've seen every conceivable battle sequence, every duel, all carnage, countless showdowns and all-too-long fights to the finish. Why does "Alice in Wonderland" have to end with an action sequence? Characters not rich enough? Story run out? Little minds, jazzed by sugar from the candy counter, might get too worked up without it? Or is it that executives, not trusting their artists and timid in the face of real stories, demand an action climax as insurance? Insurance of what? That the story will have a beginning and a middle but nothing so tedious as an ending? http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100303/REVIEWS/100309990
My wife doesn't like films that are "dusty". This scene drives almost killed her. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tHVpJGXZ21o&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tHVpJGXZ21o&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
So what? You seem to be closed minded about people who have different tastes in film than you. Be open minded to the fact that some folks don't care for certain aspects in film.
Like animation? That is simply ridiculous... Especially in a film like Avatar, where there is no discernable difference between the Avatars and the Humans... I am closed minded about people that are closed minded... I enjoy different tastes... REFUSING to see a movie because of animation such as the animation seen in Avatar, IS NOT TASTE...
That is funny... <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZxBFRfYiDNE&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZxBFRfYiDNE&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Do you consider it to be a "taste" issue? Or more of a psychological phobia of some kind? My guess would be the latter...
so I saw the movie and thought it was enjoyable. the CGI characters were actually really cool. of course I saw in 3D.
The 3D didn't really do much for me. I thought the story line was mediocre. I saw a few people taking their kids to see this... they must've never heard of Tim Burton before. Those kids are gonna go home and have nightmares about psychotic cup-throwing rabbits and big headed ladies. The acting was pretty good, I have to admit (by the actual human beings) but I was disappointed there weren't any hot chicks in it. Anna Hathaway looked like a friggin ghost. Funny that my gf wanted to see Shutter Island but thought it was probably too dark so she opted for this movie. Again, I can't wait to not see the next Tim Burton movie.
i slepped threw the whole thing almost. i remember her falling in the whole then her slaying the dragons head
Pretty good. Saw it in 3D. The 3D didn't add a whole lot, to be honest, but the acting was good (though I'm kind of over Johnny Depp in these types of roles). Worth seeing.
I remember this being addressed when that Peter Pan remake came out 5-6 years ago (watching Hook right now). New generation of kids don't have any modern versions of the classics to grow up on, the ones that are in the "Disney vault" and instead think the remakes that aim to be edgier or darker will provide the same experience. I have a 4 year old nephew, and it saddens me he probably won't be able to identify with Sandlot if he were to ever watch it.
Christopher Lee as a villian in another Epic Fantasy! actually I enjoyed it very much. it was very Burton but also very Disney at the same time... i predict some changes at Disneyland. Johnny Depp's going to be in every attraction before it's all over. i think my favorites were Alice and the White Queen... I managed to tie-in the LOST element with the foretold destiny and the distortion of time.
Ok. If people are going to ride M.Night's ass forever for making a few movies that did not live up to his early hype, then people need to gather around Tim Burton and beat him with a lead pipe until he agrees never to make any more movies. At least until he has some serious therapy, or gets a divorce from that weird zombie woman he is married to, or both. Ugh. What a dreadully bad movie. Why? There was. No. Story. None. If you absolutely LOVED Chronicles of Narnia, then you might get a kick out of this, because it is essentially the same thing. However, more specifically: One actor put himself into this thing to try to give a genuinely good performance; to *act* his socks off. Depp. Unfortunately, the movie is not ABOUT his character. It was about this 'Alice' character, which would have been fine, but, apart from being slightly precociously cute, the actress, whataver-her-name-is, lacked any kind of screen presence. In fact they all did, except Depp, who one might even suspect wrote his own lines, since no else seems to have written a script at all. Literally, if you took this script in book form, and read through it, it would take maybe fifteen minutes. And even then, it would read more like a checklist than an actual script. Tweedles? Check. Cheshire Cat? Check. Tea Party, Hatter, March hare, Dormouse? Check. Red Queen? Playing Card Soldiers? Knave? Check. Bizarre hookah-inspired visuals? Check. Weird references to nonsensical words and phrases from Carroll's books? check. Tacked-on story about an awful arranged marriage and a subsequent refusal and blossoming into a sort of business version of Amelia Earheart, bookended at the beginning and the end? Check. Script done. There was absolutely no sense of urgency, or drama, or real conflict. The actors could sense it too, surprisingly mostly from Carter, as it appeared to me that she still thought they were in read-throughs instead of actually filming. (And whoever thought it was a good idea to have her in that creepy giant head presentation should never work again. Ever. Ever ever.) And Glover? How long is that guy going to have a career based solely upon the fact that he is just a big weirdo? But its biggest sin is that it was dull. Boring. Tedious. And flat-out lazy. If you HAVE to spend money on this, avoid my mistake and wait til it hits the redbox.
