Is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland really that awful?

[Olas]

Well, it's quite an awkwardly serious film, tossing out most of the original's wackiness in place of a cliché epic fantasy storyline that doesn't mesh well with the setting. Because it misses the point of the original it feels super at odds with itself; if it's supposed to be about Alice learning to shed traditional societal values why is the main focus of the story about her saving the land by rising up to kill a dragon?

 

[Quellist]

Bottom Line: If you like Burton's movies, you will in all probability enjoy it like i did. If not then you probably wont like it so much.

Also if you are a Lewis Carrol purist you definitely wont like it!

If none of that applies to you then give it a go, whats the worst that can happen?

 

[Ratty]

Helena Bonham Carter is it, because nobody except Tim Burton likes her. And Johnny Depp.... Oy! I never thought one of my favourite actors ever could become such a fucking plague on the world of cinema. Pirates of the Caribbean poisoned him for life. Thanks, Verbinski!

To be fair, she was the best thing about Burton's Planet of the Apes. (Maybe tied with Tim Roth's delightfully over the top scene-chewing.) She still couldn't hold a candle to Kim Hunter in the original movies, though that's true of everything about that remake. She was also pretty alright in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I suspect her grotesque final scene in that movie was what attracted Burton to her in the first place.

I seem to recall hearing that Johnny Depp has attributed his shameless selling out to wanting to make a lot of money for his kids. Whereas when he was younger he had artistic ideals and aspirations. He's a talented actor, I think he just doesn't care much anymore, kinda like Marlon Brando when he got older.[footnote]Where he did things like being too lazy to read "Heart of Darkness" before filming Apocalypse Now until they basically put him on a river boat and forced him to.[/footnote]

As for the original topic I can't comment since I haven't seen the movie in question. After seeing how Burton completely altered the ending of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from the book (while claiming to be "more faithful" than the classic movie when it's not at all) to make it about his recurring theme of daddy issues I just felt like saying "Done!". Saw Sweeney Todd since then and it didn't change my mind.

 

[Callate]

I do think, if nothing else, it cements the certainty that Burton has a fetish for women with pale skin and dark circles under their eyes.

It's not an awful movie. It's got a really interesting visual style, and none of the performances are bad. I don't know that Alice in Wonderland is really the best fit for Burton's fairly typical "and then third-act violence saves the day" routine. Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of both wit and whimsy, which is a good part of why it has endured for so long. Burton's Alice is singularly lacking in the wit, and for every moment of whimsy there seems to have to be an equal and opposite moment of horror. There's a lot of sense that it's more a movie with some Wonderland-flavored trappings than something that's really in any way faithful to the spirit of the original.

...I mean, the Mad Hatter pulls a frickin' claymore, ferchrissakes.

It's not a movie I'm sorry I saw, I don't wish for the two hours back or anything. I think "awful" is over-stating the case, and certainly That Guy With the Glasses has a bit of a penchant for playing up the worst in anything (often to quite entertaining effect.) It's too extreme a movie to be described as "mediocre" or "forgettable", but it still resides in my mind in that pale pudding between good and bad.

Edit to add: If anyone hasn't read Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass, they can be had for free at Project Gutenberg. They aren't long books. Go give them a look. Read them on your phone on your commute.

 

[Brian Tams]

The movie was terribly written, all that non-sense about the super calendar that is never wrong being the poster boy for lazy writing. I was with NC one hundred percent as he bashed that PoS plot device.
Everything else about it is pretty standard Tim Burton stuff. Its a shame that what was once regarded as a great, innovative style for movies has now be devolved in cliche by the very man who made it popular.

 

[TaboriHK]

Tim Burton is the Chuck Palahniuk of films. If you just see one thing of his(albeit from earlier in his career), you'll think it's unique. If you see three things, you'll start making Chuck Palahniuk jokes.

 

[DementedSheep]

NC certainly manages to make it look so. Some of the dialogue he showed in the review seemed only to confirm my worst suspicions about Burton: that he's indulgent, pretentious and just makes the same movie pandering to the same demographic over and over again. His newest film which I've seen was Sweeney Todd, which was okay I guess. But when I saw the posters for Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, on both occasions I thought "great, another Tim Burton movie, not again!" Mind you, I've seen neither of them, but the posters just sreamed "I PANDER TO ARTISTIC GOTH TEENS WHO DON'T WANT TO FIT INTO THE NORM! LOOK AT ME I'M SO DIFFERENT AND ARTSY! LOOK I MADE ANOTHER MOVIE WITH A GOTHIC AESTHETIC BUT IT'S KIND OF WHACKY AND RANDOM CAUSE I'M SO DIFFERENT AND OH LOOK THERE'S BLOOD SPLATTER HERE CAUSE ITS DARK YOU KNOW!"

You know, it is possible to just like a particular style without it being pandering or trying to hard to be different. A lot of artists have repeated themes in their work (though yes he repeats a lot). He's are pretty popular so its not people liking his movies can make the claim they are edgy and different anyway.

Anyway, the movies has some nice visuals at times but other than that I didn't care for it. The most memorable thing to was the credits with 3D flowers blooming sooo...yeah that should tell how much of an impression the actual movie made on me.

 

[DEAD34345]

I watched it for the first time recently (as in a few days ago) and just thought it was a bit crap. The only thing I really remember was the cat, which was kind of cool looking and slightly creepy. Apart from that it just seems like a generic adventure movie, and something has gone horribly wrong if you manage to make Alice in Wonderland seem boring and mundane.

Also, the Jabberwocky pissed me off. It's a nonsense creature in a nonsense poem. It's supposed to whiffle through the tulgey wood, burbling as it comes. How do they represent this bizarre creature in the movie?

...

It's a dragon.

...

Alice kills it.

I think that just about summarises what is wrong with this movie.

 

[Artina89]

I thought it was OK, fairly standard Tim Burton fare if you ask me. It is nothing earth shattering, but it whiles away a couple of hours, Dark shadows isn't even that bad, I just wish that he would cast different actors other than Helena Bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp, as I get a little fed up of them being in nearly every Tim Burton film. My personal favourite Tim Burton films are Sleepy hollow and Edward scissorhands. I absolutely despised Charlie and the chocolate factory though.

 

[EyeReaper]

Isn't the Alice in Wonderland remake a little new for the Nostalgia Critic? I haven't watched any of his vids in a while so, it may have changed, but I thought he didn't review anything past the 2000 mark. Besides that, I'd take NC's judgements with the same grain of salt you would Yahtzee. They're there to trash a film and be funny, not give non-biased informative reviews.

As for the film itself... well, it as an interesting look to it, but that's about it. I think the biggest problem it had was that it was all about some stupid civil war. It felt like the movie didn't know whether it wanted to be more zany like the original animated movie, or darker like American McGee's Alice, so it just kinda sat in the middle. Or, at least, that's how I remember it. Haven't seen the movie since it was in theaters.

 

[Flutterguy]

I seen it in theatres, I remember not being very enthralled by the actual movie itself. The guy sitting a few rows in front of me laughing from when it started playing till when he got thrown out half way through was a lot of fun to watch though. Really wish I had what he was on, the ending was so standard fantasy action movie from what i remember. Person with sword hits CGI monster, wahoo.

 

[shogunblade]

There should be a law against casting Christopher Lee in a movie and then giving him all of 3 lines.

If we are instating that rule, Tim Burton should be in Jail, because he only ever casts Christopher Lee to say three lines in most of his movies: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dark Shadows has him maybe say 2 lines. He only ever utilized the great actor (to great effect) in Corpse Bride, which was absolutely wonderful.

OT: I didn't like Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" movie at all. It was bloated and boring. The movie was so stylized and beautiful, the content itself didn't have any meat on its bones. I really wanted to like it, desperately, but it seemed uninterested in itself, as if Burton didn't seem to care, like Alice in Wonderland was an obligation feature instead of something he honestly wanted to make.

I hope his new movie with Christoph Waltz is a return to the serious Burton, because the style he has now isn't worth watching. He needs to bring the "Big Fish"/"Ed Wood" style back.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Isn't the Alice in Wonderland remake a little new for the Nostalgia Critic? I haven't watched any of his vids in a while so, it may have changed, but I thought he didn't review anything past the 2000 mark. Besides that, I'd take NC's judgements with the same grain of salt you would Yahtzee. They're there to trash a film and be funny, not give non-biased informative reviews.

NC's been reviewing newer movies for a good while now. More recent reviews include The Last Airbender, Les Misérables, Devil, Sharknado and Man of Steel among other things. He still does review older films (his previous review was Ghost Dad), but he's definitely moved to a more contemporary direction, which kind of makes his artist name a bit jarring. But I guess there's only so many nostalgically remembered movies to talk about before you start scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas.

 

[lacktheknack]

No, Alice in Wonderland was not that bad. I quite enjoyed it.

It wasn't "great" by any means, but it was like Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory": Flashy, fun, creepy, and corny.

 

[Auron225]

I enjoyed it - I'd never consider it a classic or anything but it entertained me at the very least. It did seem a bit... sensible & formulaic for Wonderland though. My impression of Wonderland from Disneys version of it was that logic had no place there. In the latter 1/2 of this one you could forget it's Wonderland for how logically the characters behave.

Still, I enjoyed it for what it was

 

[suitepee7]

For what it's worth, I enjoyed Frankeweenie a lot more than I did Alice in Wonderland, but I like Tim Burton's animated stuff more than his "live action" stuff.

yeah although i didn't mind alice in wonderland, nightmare before xmas, 9 and frankenweenie are all amazing and show off his work a lot better. not to say he hasn't done good live action, but animation is where he really does shine.

 

[Ieyke]

Since Nostalgia Critic's latest video was a review of it and I saw it get quite a kicking when it first came out, I have to ask out of honest curiosity since I haven't seen it: is it really that bad?

NC certainly manages to make it look so. Some of the dialogue he showed in the review seemed only to confirm my worst suspicions about Burton: that he's indulgent, pretentious and just makes the same movie pandering to the same demographic over and over again. His newest film which I've seen was Sweeney Todd, which was okay I guess. But when I saw the posters for Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, on both occasions I thought "great, another Tim Burton movie, not again!" Mind you, I've seen neither of them, but the posters just sreamed "I PANDER TO ARTISTIC GOTH TEENS WHO DON'T WANT TO FIT INTO THE NORM! LOOK AT ME I'M SO DIFFERENT AND ARTSY! LOOK I MADE ANOTHER MOVIE WITH A GOTHIC AESTHETIC BUT IT'S KIND OF WHACKY AND RANDOM CAUSE I'M SO DIFFERENT AND OH LOOK THERE'S BLOOD SPLATTER HERE CAUSE ITS DARK YOU KNOW!"

I want to be clear: I'm not trying to hate on Tim Burton. Hell, I've only seen around 4-5 of his movies, and I'm sure he's made great films in the past. It just puzzles me that someone who's practically made a trademark of his personality as a strange, nonconformist artist has become such a punching bag for repeating himself so much.

Got a little side tracked there. The original question still remains: Is Alice in Wonderland (2010) really that bad? Because I actually started to get interested in it, if only to see if it really is.

It's not awful, just a massively pointless waste of time and potential.

 

[sXeth]

I've found that Burton does reasonably well with his own products (minus a couple of misses like Dark Shadows). His adaptations tend to horribly mangle the source material and be a little one-noted in tone though. His fascination with Johnny Depp also tends to muck things up since Depp has entered his caricature phase in the '00s.