MOVIE REVIEW: ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Tim Burton and Johhny Depp team up once again to bring us a follow-up to Disney's 1951 version of Alice In Wonderland. In the follow-up Alice has grown up and thinks of her first trip to Wonderland as merely a dream. But when the Red Queen takes over Wonderland, Alice must be brought back to help the White Queen regain control over Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland starts out interesting enough. You get to see a grown up Alice and how her imagination still wonders free. But once she enters Wonderland, the film came to a halt for me. My first problem with the film was that they pushed Johnny Depp to hard on the film. It is titled Alice In Wonderland, but yet all you saw on the posters and previews was Johnny Depp. I feel as if he is wasting his career on these quirky characters instead of showing his full potential in film. While I watched there were numerous times that Jack Sparrow was on the screen instead of the Mad Hatter. I understand that him and Burton are buddies, but they had an A-lister in a B-lister role. Then they absolutely ruin what little they have going by making Johnny Depp do the most ridiculous dance number I have seen in a while at the end of the film.

The effects of the film were very unimpressive, which is funny because James Cameron criticized Burton for the way he was going about doing the 3-D. Wonderland looked a little too cartoonish. Maybe I was spoiled with the amazing job Cameron did on the planet of Pandora. I don't enjoy films where I can tell that without a doubt everything was shot on a green screen set. It takes away from the film in my opinion and I believe that is what hurt the new Star Wars trilogy some.

There was some positive things about the film. I thought that Mia Wasikowska did a great job playing Alice and was sadly not given a whole lot to do in the film. I am looking forward to seeing what becomes of Wasikowska's career after the success of this film.

My favorite part was Helena Bonham Carter who played the Red Queen. She nailed the crazy, "off with their head" obsessed Queen. Every scene she was in was a highlight of the film and I am not a fan of hers, but I wish she could deliver more performances like this one.

I hope that Burton will get back to his roots once he has all these kids movies out of the way. During the late eighties and throughout the nineties he made films that I personally love such as; Beetlejuice, Batman, Batman Returns, Mars Attacks and Sleepy Hollow. But since 2000 he hasn't made a single film I have been impressed with. Planet of the Apes was a major flop, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a disgrace to the original, Sweeney Todd was ok, but I wasn't blown away and I wasn't thrilled with Alice in Wonderland. I would love to see what he could do if he would get away from Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham Carter for a few films.

I realize that it had a monster opening weekend, but I think it will drop off tremendously this weekend. Hook was a much better version of what they tried to do with this film. I don't fall asleep during many films, this film was one of them, which is why I am giving it a two out of five.