Alice in Wonderland (2010)

“Your not the same as before, you were much more.. mucher… you’ve lost your muchness” – Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp)

Alice in Wonderland (2010), directed by Tim Burton goes to new levels in not only the visual effects, but the story line as well. I saw the movie in 3D, which I don’t particularly think makes much of a difference, but why not give it a try. With the films dark visuals and adult humor, the once Disney children’s film has developed into a story that I myself would rate a little higher than PG, as I find it hard to believe younger children would even understand the adult connotations expressed.

I actually found the movie to be really enjoyable and quite funny- despite the 1 star rating it was given. The cast played their characters brilliantly, with honorable mention to Johnny Depp – who manages to play an amazingly endearing character even in the most flamboyant of costumes, and also to Mia Wasikowska, who at 19 years old, performed very well working along side acting greats such as Johnny Depp (Mad Hatter), Helena Bonham Carter (The Red Queen) and Anne Hathaway (White Queen). The only thing that did put me off a little was the decision to go with an Alice who had blonde hair and brown eyes. I found the all the little traditional Alice in Wonderland elements were included in the film except for that. Not to take away from Mia’s performance, because she performance brilliantly, however in every cartoon, DVD movie of the story, Alice always had blonde hair with blue eyes, as I think it portrayed a younger innocence of the character. In this particular film however, they chose to change it up, which I think took away from the story a bit. That is not to say that all the changes they made were bad, in fact I loved how they changed the name of the land to ‘Underland’ in stead of ‘Wonderland’ and explained that it was Alice’s younger self who pronounced it as “Wonderland” – And no I did not ruin anything from the movie by saying that; I’m not even sure if most people picked up on it, it was very subtle.

Anyhoo… Over all I think I’d give it about an 7.75 out of 10 – (I think I need to start watching some bad movie to mix up these ratings- or – maybe just rate to a harder scale) I definitely think this is a great movie, maybe not ‘top 100’ great, but definitely worth seeing.