Alice In Wonderland (Dir. Tim Burton)

The best thing about it was Johnny Depp and the March Hare. Without their characters and the way they were performed/created, it wouldn't have been especially worth watching. The beginning was nonsense. The introduction of Alice in a severe English society was boring and rigid and Mia Wasikowska's (Alice) performance seemed rubbish in the beginning but improved as the film progressed.

As Alice entered wonderland, familiar characters were poorly and rapidly introduced and then inexplicably snatched away. It was a strange and uninteresting part of the story, it set up a bad start to the film. The CGI effects were equally as poor. Very rigid and unrealistic. It seemed like they had paid more attention to certain characters and quickly knocked out background characters and setting. (Flowers with faces- a familiar character, appears once with poor animation). Unlike other Tim Burton films, there didn't seem to be much depth to the world. We saw Alice walking through the wilderness of Wonderland with wildlife sound effects but no wildlife! There was only a suggestion of the creatures that resided here when she first arrived and saw a 'horse'fly and a 'dragon'fly. Apart from that, there was no wildlife. The world seemed exclusively inhabited by the main characters and those they interacted with. Some of the animated characters were brilliant but when CGI was used on the actors, the effect just didn't sit right.

I have never been a fan of 3d films. I find that any movement is blurred considerably more when in 3d. When I saw Avatar, it was so perfect that I became unaware that I was watching a 3d film. Alice in Wonderland was nothing like that in 3d. At one point I found myself going cross-eyed when I tried to focus on what they had plunged into the audience. Probably best seen in 2d, my attention might have then been better drawn to the artistic elements of the film rather than having to concentrate on focusing my eyes on what was happening.

This could have been amazing. While Avatar pulled us into an entirely new world, Alice in Wonderland was a page in a book- flat. Definitely not the best of Tim Burton. His adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was much more accomplished and I think Alice in Wonderland was let down.