Alice in Wonderland Review

“Alice in Wonderland,” looks beautiful, but much like people that relied solely on their looks their entire life and only read between the lines on the wonderfully sculpted bodies, falls short in expectations. After literally waiting for this movie to come out for a year it finally arrives and I really wished it came with a little less pizzazz and more of a story.

A quick breakdown of the movie shows older Alice finds herself in a broken distorted Wonderland, then she aimlessly runs around unsure of what to do while a civil war between two kingdoms rages. This movie resembles the 1985 film “Return to Oz,” where Dorothy returns to Oz to find it in a worse condition than she left it and once again she carries the responsibility of cleaning up somebody else’s mess. Really the biggest difference between the two movies is that Johnny Depp only acts in one of them and the disappointment cost a lot less in 1985. This version of “Alice in Wonderland” is a live action film, instead of animated like its predecessor and takes place with Alice as an adult in the Victorian period. The advertisement for this film may have said “Alice in Wonderland” but the film clearly punched up its supporting cast member, Johnny Depp who played the Mad Hatter, as a main character, which he was not.

For the audience members that love seeing pretty pictures, but hate the way story content keeps hurting their brains, this movie is for you. Alice gets transported to an amazingly constructed Wonderland, by the fantastic Tim Burton. Tim Burton visually like all of his movies brings his “A” game, but he drops the ball once the story comes into play. This entire world feels empty, except for all the characters from the animated film and a few new ones that appear. Alice seems to save an entire world consisting of about a hundred people at most, so in retrospect she freed the amount of people that go to the DMV during mid day, not an amazing feat.

Children and teens will show the most appreciation for this film. Children probably have not seen the original and the movies visuals will keep them entertained for almost the entire time, excluding some of the beginning. Same reasoning goes for teens only that if teens do get bored this would be a great make-out movie, because if anything is missed it can easily be explained or simply overlooked to understand the film.

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