Alice In Wonderland (2010)

I was hoping for more....and if not more, I was hoping it would be better. Alice in Wonderland suffered from 2 major problems for me. The first, is that it is not Alice in Wonderland. If you are going to call your movie Alice in Wonderland, then I believe you should be telling the story of Alice in Wonderland. Instead we are presented with a 19 year old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) who, as a child had a repetitive nightmare involving rabbits in waistcoats etc. Well, what do you know, she sees said rabbit whilst attending an (unknown to her) engagement party and follows it down the hole to Underland (thats right, not Wonderland) There she is informed that she is the champion of the people and must face the Jabberwocky in order to defeat the Red Queen and restore the White Queen to power! Add to that cameos of all the familiar characters (the best being the Cheshire Cat) and apparently a movie of Alice in Wonderland you have.... yes mmm (or should that be "curiouser and curiouser", possibly the hardest line ever to deliver with credibility in a film.)

My second problem was the completely and utterly distracting use of awful CGI. Crispin Glover doesn't even have his own body in more than half the scenes his is in! It was distracting to the point of pure rage. With a film like Avatar still showing, the CGI in this feature sets the technology back about 10 years. Was there a budget constraint? I am not even sure why half the things that were CG needed to be?

I should also point out that I chose to see the film in 2-D, and I don't see how the 3-D could have made any of this better.

So....I had fairly high hopes for this and instead I was presented with Tim Burton's worst film since Planet of the Apes. It is a shame that Disney would finance a film like this, when American McGee has been trying to get his Alice project based on his amazing video game retake of Alice in Wonderland off the ground for more than a decade.... well, I guess I can still hope.