Movies We've Just Watched discussion
Movies of the Month
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alice in wonderland (tim burton, 2010)




although i completely agree with Ceci regarding too much of a good thing being the hollywood way, i will take the risk.


I just saw it on IMAX 3D and thought it was wonderful. I don't love "Alice" as a rule, but this I thoroughly enjoyed. The sets, costumes, music and use of animation - and the performances - especially Depp - were perfection.

Instead of embracing the madness of Lewis Carroll, they've decided to Narnify the story: there's a hokey story about Alice escaping an unwanted arranged marriage and finding herself in Wonderland (or is it Underland?) having to become a champion to defeat the Red Queen so that the White Queen can reclaim the throne. Call it THE RABBIT, THE QUEEN, AND THE RABBIT HOLE and you've got an idea of what to expect.
Still, I'd buy the DVD to FF to the scenes with that Cat. Wondrous.




I had not seen a 3D movie since "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" - yes, anyone even remember that movie?!? Boy, that dates me. Anyway, to claim to be excited to see this movie would be an understatement. There is not a good 3D theater anywhere near me, so I bought tickets a month ahead of time to see it near my mother's house, which is a 1 1/2 hour drive.
Then everything went wrong:
*The boyfriend got called into work, so there went my date.
*I got stuck behind a line of cars going 10 miles below the speed limit on a one-lane road for the first half of my drive. I arrived later than expected and with a terrible headache.
*My folks and I ended up in the front row, so I spent the entire movie sitting at an angle with my neck cranked back tight to be able to see the whole screen (my neck is still sore this Monday morning).
*I had a 5/6 year old sitting next to me. She spent most of the movie kicking my leg (squirming around, not deliberate)and bopped me in the head with her doll a couple of times. Her infant brother (who would bring a baby to a movie??) cried for most of the first half before the dad finally took the kid out of the theater.
*I faked having a wonderful time so that my folks would not feel bad.
*I actually cried driving home.
Done whining. Thank you for listening.
I thought it was beautiful and appropriately odd. I thought the actors used were good choices. I liked the background story for Alice and I liked that this was not a copy of the book. I thought the ending was weak, but that could be partially due to my mood prior to and throughout the movie.
My folks absolutely loved it. They could not stop raving about it after we got back to their house.
I look forward to seeing this again; maybe even in a theater before it stops showing. I am certain I will enjoy it more.

Barely - haha. I joked with my boyfriend later that I am surprised the car didn't break down on the way home, or some other tragedy as the "icing on the cake".

don't you hate having to sit in the front row?


hahahahaha!
mawgojzeta,
the last time i sat in the front row was for the blair witch project. it didn't help.




I saw Alice and was surprised that I quite liked it - although it was probably also novel watching Alice in Wonderland in a story which had an actual structured storyline as opposed to the original nonsensical approach.
As for the village, I thought it was a hoot, as long as you consider the whole thing a bit of a quirky comedy it's fine.

"The movie sucked"
Not sure why he did not like it. But not only is this kid a fan of Burton's movies, he is a worldly fellow as far as movies go.
When I speak to him next I am quite curious as to why he did not like it.

good things first - i know the rules ... lovely production and design ... cool red queen head action ... giggled at the animal furniture at the red queen's castle (ha! - keep your eye out for the bats!) ... and a wonderful cheshire cat
but despite all those cool things - i believe there was one big, fat suckie thing and that caused the other sypmtoms of suckieness - a disjointed, unintelligent story / screenplay ...
yup - it lead to a whole raft of distant, flat characters that i wanted to care about but just didn't ... i know it's kooky wonderland but there was no real cohesion ...
and only glimmers of neat depp-ness (quite a restrained mad hatter ITCO) ...
and where oh where was alice? - why did they use a cardboard cut out?
boringer and boringer


To be fair, Burton seems to be trying for something lighter, after the total midnight darkness of SWEENEY TODD, and that's not a bad thing necessarily.
And I'll agree with Sam -- that girl playing Alice was a severe mistake. She's not up to it.


alex, are you talking about the version with w.c. fields, cary grant, et al? it's been ages since i saw that one, but even as a child i wasn't sold on it.


ALICE is an interesting companion piece to Burton's CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, his other full-out adaptation of a beloved children's classic.
Both films take considerable liberties with their source material. CHARLIE feels more fully realized, somehow, as if the material engaged Burton on a level that ALICE doesn't: there's more of the usual Burton energy. Depp's Wonka and Mad Hatter might be distant cousins: each has a distinct wackadoo hairstyle, neither is seen for long without a top hat, they seem to be rather extravagantly emotionally damaged artistic types, and each forms an emotional bond (of sorts) with the main character.
Both films have some good solid fun, CHARLIE more than ALICE, I'd say. CHARLIE's Oompa Loompa songs and open enjoyment of torturing those rotten kids are joyous, and ALICE has that magnificent Cheshire Cat and some memorable moments from Depp and Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen. But both CHARLIE and ALICE seem to suffer from being aggressively family-oriented. CHARLIE takes a final 20 minutes to offer a pro-family message, one that isn't a part of Roald Dahl's novel: the fact that 5 out of the 6 families presented in the film are monstrous is carefully ignored in the (oddly frigid) celebration of family domesticity at the film's end.
ALICE goes another route entirely, jettisoning Lewis Carroll's free-form madness for a too-carefully laid out girl-power-friendly narrative taking too-familiar elements from all sorts of sources (Fleming's WIZARD OF OZ, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, even SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) and ends up with a doubtless well-intentioned but simply ridiculous ending, involving young Alice taking hold of her destiny and ending up being sent to China, for heaven's sake, as an apprentice in her father's partner's business. I mean really.


I certainly don't have a problem with family friendly, or family oriented, that's not the problem, really. It just felt like both CHARLIE and ALICE needed to add rather too obviously engineered "message" endings to works that did very well without them.
That said, I'm remembering that the first film of WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY manages to add the subplot about Charlie's honesty, to prove that he's worthy of winning the Grand Prize at the end, and I'll freely admit that I always get a little lump in my throat when Gene Wilder delivers that final warning about what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted (he lived happily ever after, of course). That little bit always moves me far more than the blatant MESSAGE that Burton tacks on to his film of CHARLIE.
Melissa, I'm not sure I agree with your point about Alice not being meant to be the central figure of Burto's ALICE. Therre's that extended prologue in the film that seems to aim to build up a lot of sympathy for her, and set up a lot of what she'll be dealing with on her visit to Wonder/Underland, a la the opening section of Fleming's film of THE WIZARD OF OZ. The whole film revolves around her and her journey into being a champion, and all that. I think she's the central figure, all right, as Dorothy is in the earlier film. If only they'd cast an actress of anywhere near the same abilities.

i hear what melissa is saying about alice and that to some extent carroll posits her as an observer that makes her way through wonderland - and yeah - she is us: the audience. but if you don't give an audience more than that - if you don't show us how that journey (that we are all taking) changes the main character (or us - we have to feel like we've changed somehow at the end) then there isn't much in the way of a dramatic structure that will pay off in the final resolution. i haven't seen the newest wonderland - but i know dramatic structure. those are the rules and people have tried to bend them....to varying degrees of success.


If anyone bent the rules of dramatic structure, it was good old Lewis Carroll, who wrote a weird little children's book filled with private jokes, surreal poems and some of the wildest imagery ever to be not induced by hallucinogenics, no serious moral to speak of, and he did it with a degree of success that eludes Burton and his screenwriter.

damn.
that's exactly what i was thinking.
sad.
i was really wanting it to be more.



some nice images in wonderland - sets were cool and must have cost a pretty penny to produce, but so much of the cgi just makes everything look as flat as a hallmark greeting card. agree with tom that the cheshire cat breathes a breath of fresh air into the mix - i also liked the final scene with the caterpillar as he slips into his cocoon. helena bonham carter cracked me up a few times. lines like, "drinky", "i love my fat boys" and "my jabber-baby-wocky" made laughter leap effortlessly. i don't think anyone ever nailed the spoiled child thing quite as well.
depp seemed a bit stilted in this film. not sure if he worked or not. there was the nice dichotomy of his calm and mad self, but he seemed to lack humanity. that touch of sadness at the end when he knows alice is going to leave was the only scene where i felt he was connected with his fellow actors. anne hathaway, who i usually can't stand, didn't annoy me as much as she usually does. she brought a bit of humor to most of her scenes.
but the parts don't really add up to a satisfying whole. i've always wanted more from filmic versions of alice in wonderland. i said it in an earlier post - i think this book really lives in your imagination and is basically un-filmable.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/...
has anyone seen it?