Alice In Wonderland

One of Disney's most infamous, and perhaps controversial, stories of all time finally comes to life on the big screen in a big, real life motion picture. While the story written for the screen loses most of the material that made it controversial to begin with, it still comes with a lot of problems. Maybe it's because I don't really know the story of Alice In Wonderland (it's actually called the Underworld) or maybe it's because of another reason, but this film definitely suffered from its quite lackluster script.

In a film that seriously might have more CGI than Avatar, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp come to together again to do what they do best, make something weird. I tend to like their collaborations but this time was much different. Alice In Wonderland is about, who else, but Alice. In the film she is portrayed by Mia Wasikowska. She was very miscast. She doesn't bring much to the part and missed the mark on the way that Alice is supposed to be. The way that I remember (loosely) the story from my childhood is not like anything that is portrayed in this film adaptation. It's hard to explain how Mia Wasikowska missed the hard (isn't that what I'm here for though?) but it just is. She didn't capture the original Alice. The feeling of the character just isn't there. In a world where the only believable thing is Alice, she is unbelievable. The story in the film goes like this. Alice falls down a hole into the Underworld, or Wonderland. There she meets all of the characters from the story. The twins, the cat, the mouse and everybody else. They tell her that this time scroll shows that Alice will be the one to slay this dragon like creature to restore power to the White Queen (played by Anne Hathaway) and to take it away from the Red Queen (played by Helena Bonham Carter). Along the way she meets the Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp) who used to be the hatter for the White Queen back when she ruled the land. Only everything has gone to crap since then because the Red Queen rules now. The film follows the quest of Alice, the Mad Hatter (I'm not sure that's actually his name) and all of the other characters in their quest to get Alice the only sword that can slay the dragon so that she can. Yes, as best as I remember it, that is not really the original story. Don't misread me, I'm not ragging on this film because it doesn't follow the original story. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter give strong performances and Anne Hathaway is good too, but other than that, the film doesn't offer much. At all. The humor falls mostly flat and it's just too poorly written. Obviously this story would have to rely a lot of CGI, which went well but the script was not convincing that this was all real, like it's supposed to be. The film looks awesome visually, and if you've seen Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, yes with Johnny Depp, if you watch at the beginning when Alice first walks into Wonderland, the tree of the dead is clearly visible in the background. At least the actors could do their best with the script. Usually I have to think about a film before I write a review. The pros, cons, its grade and everything but this film came easily to me. Watching it, I knew the only things the film offered was the acting. Yes, Tim Burton is good always as the director but, to me, direction doesn't mean a whole lot to a film. In extreme cases, it can be really good or really bad but usually it's just there - it's fine.

You know that a film can't be that good when at one o'clock in the afternoon, you yawn several times while watching it. That's a big ouch. Alice In Wonderland has great CGI, isn't too long and Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter shine. I'm not saying that they should of stuck with the original story word for word, I liked the story that the film offered. Unfortunately, I think it's safe to call this the poorest written film of the year to date. If there are two things that are important in a film, it's the acting and the script. If one is great and the other is just so-so, that's manageable. If one is just completely horrible, that's going to hurt. Alice In Wonderland is missing one of the most, if the most, important aspect to a good film. A script.

Final Verdict: C-