Alice In Wonderland

This is a guest post by Kelly at Kelly's Lucky You. Kelly loves movies and is known to go to two or three in one day! Her favorites are action films and romantic comedies. Daughter, Rosie, is four years old. Rosie still prefers animation, and it's suspected that the popcorn is her favorite part of going to the movies.

Tim Burton is a genius. Alice In Wonderland was a visual experience like no other. The last movie I saw before Alice was Avatar. Although Burton didn’t create another planet like Cameron did - he certainly created another world. The photography and use of color was amazing. Scenes like the chess-battle between the Red Queen and the White Queen were technically perfect. Where it fell short, for me, was in the compromises. It strayed a bit from the original story - but not enough to make it surprising. It was softened a bit from the usual Tim Burton creations, giving it more mass appeal, but also softening the creative genius. It had a bit of the Star Wars era animal creations but not enough to be a sci-fi lovers movie. It had a bit of the love story between The Mad Hatter and Alice but not enough for the chick-flick audience. I’m not convinced that Disney and Burton are a good combination.

The design - set design, costume design was spell-binding for me. I loved the different costumes for Alice - as she shrunk and grew, her costumes changed. The different sets in the Red Queen’s world and the White Queen’s world were innovative yet not too bizarre. I was distracted by Johnny Depp’s makeup and the occasional feminine mannerisms. He’s such a great actor, he doesn’t need bizarre makeup to convince us that he’s mad.

I didn’t take Rosie - she was frightened by the commercials for the movie. That was a wise decision, I don’t think she would have like it at all. The Dormouse spearing the eye of the Bandersnatch would have done her in. I’m not sure what age group was the target audience. Again, there were too many compromises. It was a mass appeal film that perhaps should have targeted a niche audience.

I was entertained - it passed my “watch test” - I didn’t check my watch - but it won’t make my top ten list. Maybe top twenty-five. If you only go to see a few movies this year, I would skip Alice In Wonderland. If you enjoy seeing many films, this is a visual/big screen movie and one to catch in the theater rather than DVD.

Did you see the movie? What did you think? What did you like? Not like? How would you rate it?

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Kelly also wrote a review of the new movie, "How To Train Your Dragon", you can read about it at Kelly's Lucky You.