Alice in Wonderland (2010— 108 mins) Depp, Carter, Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska

   A lot has been said out there on Tim Burton’s latest update of an old movie. Some of it good a lot of it bad. First we got Wonka and now we got Alice.  Unlike most critics who get paid for there overall critique, I tend to try and review movies on whether I liked it and if I think other people will both like it and should see it. 

   How do we look at the original Alice? To me it’s a kid’s story there to amuse little children, and has some undertones in it for adults and is just frickin weird. However, it succeeds at being a fun kids movie. You really have to go into this update looking for an hour and a half escape to be entertained, with the colors and the exaggerated characters and slight semblence of a “story”.  If you have not seen it before, I do recommend you see it. It’s entertaining and fun to watch, but beware, there are ton’s of faults. You might not want to see it again for fun( unless of course your kids love it then you might have to) but it is something I think most people will want to see once at least.

   The reasons for the negative part of it? Well, it’s Burton. Tim Burton is starting to become a cliche’ of himself. A joke by his own name. He is starting to be strange and unusual for the pure SAKE of being strange. Again this is Alice in Wonderland the whole story is supposed to be strange, so I will give him a little bit of a pass here. What I just cannot give him a pass on is the occasional piss poor CG effects. There are some great effects in the movie but there are also some shots where it looks like 2 people standing in front of an image on a screen. Granted green screens are fairly commonplace in most CG needed scenes, but they don’t need to look this bad. When two people are with a GS it usually doesn’t just look like a projector is making the image appear int he background. If you can deal with some of those “WOW that looks bad” moments then you can enjoy the movie just fine. There are some accents and low talking (which drive me batty too when I can’t hear it all) so try and pay attention some it might get hard to hear for you too.

   Special thumbs up to Crispin Glover and Helena BOnham Carter who were BOTH outstanding.

Verdict—> As an adaptation of a children’s movie with adult metaphors and themes it hits the mark just fine. Get past the Burton-ness and just lazy CG moments and you will like it. Your kids might like it too, not overly scary at any part and great colors so those new shiny TV’s everyone now has will make it look good too. Remember this is Alice in Wonderland not Citizen Kane so don’t take it too seriously.

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