Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Tagline: You’ve got a very important date.

Curiosity: My special lady friend wanted to see it. And OK, I’m still interested in Tim Burton’s work, even if I can count the number of his films I’ve enjoyed on one hand (Big Fish, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, and Beetlejuice. No, I haven’t seen Ed Wood, and no, The Nightmare Before Christmas doesn’t count. Shit belongs to Henry Selick).

Plot: Set as a pseudo-sequel to Lewis Carroll’s book, the now-teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has grown up with an underappreciated intelligence and dry sense of humor. When an unwanted suitor (The Fall’s mo-fuckin’ Leo Bill!) asks for her hand in marriage, she opts to fall down a rabbit hole into Underland instead (turns out she fucked up when she called it Wonderland. TWIST!). There, she goes through some Lord of the Rings shit and keeps almost making out with the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), which is gross and weird and wrong and bad and wrong and bad and wrong and bad and…

Thoughts: My girl and I caught the film in 3-D, which was exciting for, I dunno, 15 minutes or so? Alice in Wonderland further proves in my mind the limits of CGI. See, the part where Alice is in England looks absolutely amazing, and it’s not even meant to look that stunning. Sure, she goes to a sweet party, but the eye candy is clearly meant to be Underland. Yet it’s England that served me eye-popping visuals. The 3-D image was crisp and beautiful But once Alice enters Greenscreenland, things get clunky. Some of the backgrounds look good enough, but there are some major quality control issues from scene to scene in terms of motion and proportions.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Shit remains in my mind as the height of lazy CGI filmmaking (Who CGIs boxes?!), but Alice comes close – Crispin Glover’s height is digitally enhanced to make him taller and lankier. This does not always look right, which begs the question… why not just cast someone taller? It’s like Glover had that many lines anyway; surely it would have been cheaper to cast an unknown. I get some of the digital choices, like increasing Helena Bonham Carter’s head size to insane dimensions, but most of them seem unnecessary.

The same could be said for most of the characters. Alice doesn’t really try to justify reusing any of the Carroll’s classic characters, save for maybe the Mad Hatter. The Cheshire Cat exists solely as a deus ex machina several times over; Tweedledee, Tweedledum, the Hare, and others get even less than that.

The first half of the film feels rushes as it tries to trot out as many familiar characters as possible. Yet the second half drags on and on and on. Alice is now the Chose One who can save Underland, and man does it take her a long-ass time to work up the nerve to embrace her destiny or whatever. I can’t believe we paid $25 for this crap.

Reflection: No seriously, why the fuck would you give the Mad Hatter and Alice sexual chemistry? And then you have the nerve to make me sit through this closing song: