My Review: Alice in Wonderland (2010) (7/10)

¨You used to be much more…muchier. You`ve lost your muchness.¨

(7/10) Those are the words the Mad Hatter tells Alice after she has returned to Wonderland, but now much older as a 19 year old girl who has no memory of her last visit there when she was a little kid. Tim Burton directs this classic Disney tale and he teams up once again with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. They have already worked together in Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton`s Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Depp and Burton have a profound respect for each other and it is always a pleasure to experience one of their creative films. When I heard they were going to work together in this film I was really excited because I knew that Burton could do something memorable with Wonderland. He is one of the most imaginative and creative directors and Wonderland was way ahead of its time when it came out in 1951. I wasn`t a big fan of the cartoon because it was missing a story, but the characters and the world that was created was very imaginative nonetheless. Burton had a lot of interesting material to work with here and he did a great job although perhaps I was expecting a bit too much. This is far better than the cartoon because there is a better plot and a decent story this time, but the characters didn`t seem as mad as they were in the original. I was surprised that this time around they all made sense, but I guess you need that in order to have a good story. The visuals and the effects were also amazing so Burton was successful in recreating this world.

The story takes place many years after Alice has visited Wonderland and she has no memory of her visit there. She is now a nineteen year old girl who is getting ready for a banquet which is thrown in her honor although she doesn`t know it yet. Alice (played by Mia Wasikowska who could recently been seen in Amelia) is not happy about having to dress up for the event and she is still dreaming about a different world where she doesn`t have to do what she is expected. She still has some of the same attitudes that she had in the original film. Alice soon finds out from her cousins that the banquet is thrown in her honor because Hamish (Leo Bill) is going to propose to her and that she is expected to say yes because he is a Duke. Alice doesn`t have feelings for Hamish and she can`t say yes and is suddenly distracted by a rabbit that is running across the yard and decides to follow it. She ends up falling through a rabbit hole and ends upside down in a locked room very similar to the one in the original film. She finds a key in the table but it only opens a very small door so she can`t get through it. This is perhaps one of the most similar scenes to the original except that there is no talking doorknob this time, and Alice still has no memory of this place even though she goes through the exact same situation of shrinking and then getting larger. Once in Wonderland, or should I say Underland because the other was the name that Alice had given it when she was a child, she runs into the same creatures she had been with in the past such as Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the white rabbit (Micheal Sheen from Frost/Nixon), the blue caterpillar (Alan Rickman from the Harry Potter series), the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), and the Red Queen (Helen Bonham Carter) among others. There are also some new characters like the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), Stayne the knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover from Charlie`s Angels), Bandersnatch, and the Jabberwocky.

What I enjoyed more about this film than the original one is that there was an actual plot to this story. Alice had a mission this time around and she was not just running after the white rabbit. There is much more action and Burton does a great job at recreating this world. Johnny Depp is great as usual and his character was probably one of the best in the movie and the reason why many people wanted to see Alice in the first place. Mia Wasikowska also does a good job as she has the lead role in the film. Burton still recreates certain elements from the original such as the entrance to Wonderland, the scene where the Red Queen is playing wicket using a flamingo for a stick, and the famous riddle that the Mad Hatter asks, ¨why is a raven like a writing desk? ¨ to which we still don`t get an answer too because there isn`t one really. The movie works and the visuals are great, but you are still left with a sense that there could be so much more done with this movie. Wonderland is a magical place, but to rephrase the words the Mad Hatter tells Alice it seems that this movie was missing something more…muchier. We could have used some more of Burton`s famous muchness.

My Review: Alice in Wonderland (1951) (5/10)

¨If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn`t.¨

(5/10) Those are the words Alice tells her cat right before following the white rabbit to Wonderland. I can just imagine movie trailers today saying ¨Be careful what you wish for¨ because that is exactly what happens in this 1951 classic Disney movie adapted from Lewis Caroll`s novel of the same name; Alice gets what she wishes for and it isn`t all that fun. This was probably one of my least favorite Disney movies when I was a kid. I remember being as freaked out by all the mad characters in Wonderland as Alice was. I really loved Peter Pan, Snow White, Cinderella, Robin Hood, Pinocchio, but this was not one of the movies I remembered enjoying. My memory was not so great either so I decided to re watch this movie and see how I felt about it now that I am a bit older. The main reason I wanted to see this however is because I am a huge fan of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp and their new version of Alice is coming out this weekend with Depp playing the Mad Hatter so I wanted to be more familiar with the story. I really didn`t like this film, but I am still excited about Burton recreating this world. Alice in Wonderland directors Clyde Geronime, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske had already worked together in Cinderella, and they continued to do so with Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp. Out of these four Disney movies this is the one I enjoyed the least, but it is by far the most imaginative one and Burton will surely do something great with this fascinating world.

Alice is voiced by Kathryn Beaumont (who later voiced Wendy in Peter Pan) and she is a very imaginative girl who doesn`t want to listen to stories from a book because they are just words without pictures. She wishes she could live in a world where everything is different and animals can speak like humans. Right after she says these things a white hare (voiced by Jerry Colinna) with a clock runs past her and her kitten saying that he is late. When Alice hears him speak, she decides to follow him and ends up falling through a hole in the ground. Here she enters a room with a speaking doorknob, the hare has already passed the door but she is locked in. The doorknob tells her to drink a liquid from a bottle that makes her smaller so she can fit through the door, but once she does so Alice doesn´t have the key to get through so she has to take a bite from a cookie in order to be big again and reach the key. The problem is that she becomes a giant and begins to cry so much that the room begins to flood. Everything is solved when she drinks the liquid, shrinks again and finally is able to get through the door and enter Wonderland. The movie continues to get weirder and weirder as Alice searches for the hare while meeting all these strange characters such as a Cheshire cat (Sterling Holloway) that can disappear, a Mad Hatter (Ed Wynn) that is constantly drinking tea and celebrating his unbirthday, a Caterpillar (Richard Haydn) that is getting high before transforming into a butterfly, and an evil Queen of Hearts (Verna Felton) with an army of cards that seems to control Wonderland and is some sort of a tyrant. Once Alice is in this world, she wants to find her way back home because she realizes that everyone is crazy in that place and that nothing makes sense, and that is exactly how I felt.

Disney has made a lot of successful films, but this movie is way too imaginative and lacks a better story. I really felt bored throughout the movie and I was hoping it would end even before Alice made it to Wonderland. This does not lower my expectations however with Burton´s film and I am glad I saw this again because now I am familiar with some of the characters that will be in the film. Burton is a specialist with fantasy and he can perhaps create a better story using some of these whacky characters. The main problem I had with the cartoon is that there was no plot whatsoever. It felt like it was missing something. I don`t think I will be seeing this again. Even Alice was sorry for wanting to create a world like this and I ended up agreeing with her when she said ¨It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change.¨ That is exactly what I thought at the end of this movie. Many people enjoyed this film so I guess it is just me. I don`t have too much imagination.