Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

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Hmmm... I'm going to avoid any reviews so I can just see it, but I'm often scared by Tim Burton working with remakes/reimaginings. So far POTA and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are two of the most dissapointing (and horrid) films I've ever seen.
 
A popular paper in the UK
The News of the World ripped it to pieces
IT'S not often that you can start a film review quoting the wisdom of Orlando Bloom.
But Alice in Wonderland is a strange case.
As Elf-features himself once said in his film Elizabethtown: "There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the non-presence of success. Any fool can accomplish failure.


"But a fiasco? A fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions."


And readers, that's Alice in Wonderland for you - a bona fide, bums-in-the-air fiasco that needs to be burned and the ashes hurtled off in the direction of the nearest black hole as soon as you can, NASA.
In fact it's Lesbian Vampire Killers bad - the kind of film that you don't just dislike or even hate, but one that your body physically rejects like a dodgy organ transplant.
I know it sounds extreme. After all, this is a much-touted, mega-budget, 3D spectacular from none other than Tim Burton and Disney, starring a host of family favourites.
So let me explain. Set 15 or so years after the original Alice adventures, this film stars Mia Wasikowska as a 19-year-old Alice who remembers nothing of her first trip down the rabbit hole.
In the middle of an embarrassing marriage proposal, she flees to the woods, tumbles down the hole again and learns it is her destiny to kill the Jabberwocky, dethrone the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and return power to her White sister (Anne Hathaway).
In 2008, when Tim Burton chose Mia to play Alice, she had never acted in a big feature film before. And that remains true to this day.
Cos bejaysus - there's not been a lead character this paper-flat since the South Park movie.
The girl's got all the warmth of a refrigerated trout, and a face you'd expect to see Blu-Tacked to the inside of a London phone box. She's not a heroine - she looks like she's ON heroin.
She wanders through Wonderland - which has been renamed Underland for no good reason.
Flailing
And along the way she meets the expected cast of characters played by famous names in full-on, blazing-egos, celeb-cameo mode. Paul Whitehouse does his See You Jimmy voice as the March Hare, and Alan Rickman texts in his five-or-so lines as the Caterpillar. Matt Lucas is Tweedledum and Tweedledee - two fake-looking CGI lumps with half a personality between them. And Stephen Fry plays the Cheshire Cat (the only beast in fiction smugger than him).
All of them use funny-voice humour - where you get a wacky accent in place of actual gags.
But worst of all - and it pains me to say it - are Johnny Depp and Helena.
Johnny's Mad Hatter is a flailing, pointless idiot whose Scottish accent comes and goes like Ashley Cole on a US tour. It's the worst part he's played in his life.
And whoever thought up his "breakdance" should be dragged out into the street and given the Saigon Execution treatment.
Then there's Helena. She's Burton's missus so that's probably why he found it too hard to breathe those words that no husband wants to say to his wife:
"Stop doing a seventh-rate impression of Queenie from Blackadder II and put some bloody EFFORT into it, woman."
Now on to the special effects. Oddly, for a kids' film, there are THREE instances of someone getting spiked through the eyeball. By the third time, Burton's managed the peculiar trick of being disgusting AND boring at the same time.
The 3D's cack, too. Remember Avatar and Up, with their long, graceful, tracking shots that drew you right into the picture? Well, there's none of that here.
Instead you get flat-looking people slightly in front of a flat-looking backdrop, and the occasional pointy thing shoved in your face - all cut together at a speed that'll snap your retinas.
Because while Burton knows how to make a 2D movie look good, he plainly doesn't understand that the same techniques can sink a 3D one.
Burton on his A-game is a force to be reckoned with. Think Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns.
But if there is a letter 26 places past Z, that's the type of game he's on here.
So let me call it now: Alice in Wonder- land - the most disappointing film of 2010.
And just call me the Mad Hater.
 
That News of the World reviewer didn't like any of the films he saw & reviewed. Infact it left me convinced he didn't like film at all!!
Perhaps it was down to a bad Hotdog! :)
 
That News of the World reviewer didn't like any of the films he saw & reviewed. Infact it left me convinced he didn't like film at all!!
Perhaps it was down to a bad Hotdog! :)

I agree the guy seems to dislike everything, so I don't think he will keep his job for long.
If you want free advertising for a Newspaper you should really give all blockbusters the thumbs up, so the paper's name appears on the poster.

Empire or Total Film reviewers are normal on the money for me.
 
The only way to watch this movie it seems, is either-

A(Drunk
B(Stoned outta your mind
C(Tripping on Acid
D( Tripping on Shrooms.

If you do not do these, or cannot get to them...I suggest you dont see it. :lol
 
I dont get the hate for Charlie at all.....totally understand Apes though....eh.

Really? From the Michael Jacksonesque Wonka portrayal, to the horrendous Oompa Loompa dance routines... what is there not to hate :lol

And another case where the original is so far superior that the remake is just unnecessary. Very similar to the result with POTA.
 
Most of what I'm hearing about this movie is what I was expecting to hear.
 
The simple fact that the commercial for this movie is on every five seconds told me this was going to be a mess weeks ago. No studio spends that kind of ad dollars if the film is good; they don't need to, word of mouth is free and the best advertising you can have.

But like everyone else here, I'll see it this weekend. And this movie should have a huge opening weekend because of it.
 
And so the haters begin their quest to throw crap at everything they were too scared or not talented enough to do themselves!

I am literally giddy like a little girl with excitement for this movie, Tim Burton even made me like a musical with his Sweeney Todd.

This is going to ROCKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whatever anyone else says.

D
:chew:chew:chew:chew:chew
 
God you're strange. So very very strange. I bet you think I hate this movie already.

Fanboys...they just dont read.
 
Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it anyway.

Having read some reviews my expectations are lower than when I first heard about it, but I'm still looking forward to it. Movie critics are paid to be cynical and jaded.

Just go in to the theater with the heart of a child and live in Wonderland for a while.




And I for one, loved Charlie.
 
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