If I could grade a director on effort alone, Tim Burton would have gotten a much higher rating from me on this. Alice in Wonderland, the 2010 imagining of Lewis Carroll’s novels, is brimming with so much excess everything at times it’s uncomfortable to watch.
Alice is 19-years-old, thirteen years after she first fell down the rabbit hole as a little kid. Summoned by the original film’s gang-bang cast of character, Alice must defeat the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, hilariously imperialistic) from her reign over the magical kingdom.
Oddly enough, it’s the little things that make the movie feel epic. Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter was an expected but triumphant role for Burton’s go-to guy, and newcomer Mia Wasikowska in the title role is top-notch. However way too many characters are introduced in the movie’s 90-minute time frame, and are left wandering around with nothing at all to do. That’s not the Burton I know; the adaptation-happy Burton never sacrifices a good story to include all of the original’s characters. Look how well he made Sweeney Todd and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
Burton reportedly had a $100 million budget for his take on Wonderland. (Or as this movie stupidly calls it “Underland”, blaming a seven-year-old’s misunderstanding of the world’s original name.) He goes nothing short of crazy with that amount of money, painting every aspect with gross amounts of color and random zany paraphernalia. All of it wildly unnecessary.
Leading to a conclusion that reminded me of something out of Chronicles of Narnia, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is no threat to the original. Yet I still couldn’t bring myself to hate it. It’s not one of Burton’s better works, although the great acting and mesmerizing supporting players we’ve come to love make it that much easier to digest.

3/5 stars.

Watch my full review of Alice in Wonderland here!