No it tisn't

Rating: 5/10 (12 March 2010)

I'm not going to claim to be an expert on the subject, and I do not have a choice for the best adaptation of the brilliant novels. However, and what I'm about to point out is clear to anyone who has seen some of this, I'm reporting it for anyone who hasn't, or who may think that it is a nasty rumor... this, in fact, is not Alice in Wonderland. No, really. It is a sort of sequel, a bit of "return to" fiction. Well, not all of those are without their merit. But this one... for one thing, was anyone jonesing for any such thing? So this is more like a regular fantasy movie, and in that regard, it simply does not begin to hold a candle to even the lesser of its competitors. Is it being overly critical to expect a film of a little less than two hours to be epic? Of course not! This has about the running time of The Neverending Story, a timeless classic in the same genre. The plot itself is reasonable, if flawed. And the fact that this has one... Tim wanted to change that for this one, from the other versions. Here's the thing... it isn't meant to. Part of the greatness of the beloved tale *is* this liberation from coherence and logic, and it was there on the pages. Go look, I'll wait. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The beings lack the majority of the charm, and a lot of the amazement is sucked out of the environments. For all the beautifully done FX, the designs vary in quality, and the creatures don't quite make the impact or have the physical weight to them that they should(it has been done better elsewhere, where it was also CGI). This would have to be one of the least Burton-like and most bland of his pictures yet; we know you're above this level, what happened? Not since Planet of the Apes(and these two may be all the examples of it) has something like that been the case. It isn't an empty production; there is the odd detail that *really* works, the occasional chuckle, and the perfectly chosen cast certainly does shine. On the whole, though, this is excessively straightforward and sanitized, something that you probably wouldn't have dreamt of saying(or hearing) about anything by the man responsible for Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice before this. Finally, let me say that Depp should perhaps have picked one way of delivering his performance and stuck with it. This is not that funny, or wondrous, or visually stimulating(gorgeous images with little to no emotion behind them leave audiences cold). There is a lot of potentially frightening and disturbing content in this. I recommend this to those who wish to take in anything related to the original. 5/10