Ohh Pretty.... Bad.
Last year, I had several friends who had gone to see Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland, a film I had little interest in. The trailers gave me a good impression of the film, it was either going to be interesting or bad. My friends all really enjoyed it, so I bit the bullet and gave the film a chance. I will upfront say I did not see the film in 3-D, but from what I have heard about the 3-D, and the way the film looked in 2-D, I saved money with good reason. People who saw the 3-D version paid extra money for absolutely nothing.
People seem to be divided about the film, which is actually how I first felt when I saw it. The look of this film is incredible, there is no denying that. The world of Alice in Wonderland has always been stylized, even in the original book. Burton's style works terrifically for this film. It's one of the darker version of Wonderland you'll ever see, and it works because of that. The giant mushrooms look cartoony, and the beasts are completely bizarre and frightening. I love the way this film looks.
But the dark aspect also gives one not so small negative. This film was given a PG rating, and that is an utter joke. Children under the age of twelve should not see this film. TWO scenes features a river filled with severed human heads. Yes, in one shot they are made of cement, but that is a facade revealed in a later scene. The heads are real, and the river is actually blood. This is at least PG-13, and I will not argue with those who think the film deserved an R. I am the type of person who fights for more G-ratings in darker children's films, knowing children can handle more than the MPAA seems to be thinking nowadays, but this is way too far for me. I repeat, do not let children under twelve see this picture. It's disgusting it got away with PG, don't let it fool you.
Another negative is the look of the film doesn't work for one character, The Mad Hatter, played by Johnny Depp. The Hatter looks like a drag queen, there is no going around it. It's ridiculous, inane. This is the ugliest, least flattering Mad Hatter costume I have ever seen, and most likely will ever see. I hated it in the trailer, and was really the reason I lost interest in the film originally. My friends tried to convince me otherwise, but I stand by what I thought then, and I still think it is a horrible design.
I would like to point out that this is a Disney film. Similar to A Christmas Carol (which I have not seen), this is an adaptation that Disney has already done. I will take this time to say the original animated version of Disney's Alice in Wonderland is a masterpiece of animation. Disney should not have tried to do another adaptation of the book, they did it perfectly the first time. Please look for the film if you are one of the few people who has never seen it, you will not regret it, it's beautiful.
This film on the other hand, has a wonderful style but absolutely no substance. While that can work for some films, it fails miserably in this one. This film is a very low two out of five stars. Part of me actually hates the film, but not enough to rank it any lower. It's a bad film, that had no reason to be made.
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