Alice In Wonderland: colourful but not fantastical

Posted by Peter on Mar 7, 2010 in Movies | Comments Off

The latest version of Alice In Wonderland is an enjoyable but not nearly fantastical enough movie to really capture the essence of “Alice In Wonderland”. Tim Burton does a really great job of creating a visually rich environment filled with colour and textures. The 3D version adds to the effects for example of the caterpillar blowing smoke in Alice’s face or when Cheshire disappears into thin air. Johnny Depp does a great job as the Mad Hatter in the same way that he does in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; strange, quirky and ultimately original in his own small ways.

That said, the story line tries best to follow the original plot while making it more suitable for the arc of Hollywood movies. Ultimately it feels less fantastical and more motivational than the original story. Feel good confidence building messages for women become more the story and less the wild and weird imagery of Lewis Carroll’s imagination.

The worst however is reserved for the dialogue which is a real let down and lacks any of the whimsical, mathematically riddled or just plain fantastical tones of the book.

Ultimately, this is the great letdown for me and really takes away from the sense of “falling down the rabbit hole”. WIth a good amount of investment in the dialogue, the movie could have respected the original plot much more authentically while adding a lot. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case and the final product falls short of what it could have been given the creative and rich imagination of its director.