Bitter disappointment... or just far worse than expected

Rating: 2/10 (14 March 2010)

It's just natural that great directors manage to acquire a good reputation and a sound name in the industry of cinema. However, sometimes that means a genuine quality and faithfulness to his/her own ideas and creativity (as it is the case of non-trendy directors such as David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Godard and many others), but sometimes it is just used as a commercial power to hype their movies. Still, maybe a movie can be that hyped and fully associated with special 3D CGI effects and still be good... but I soon feared that it would not be the case of this Alice in Wonderland.
This was not a film for Tim Burton to make anyway - as much as hight is the quality of most of his works, he never truly managed to create a original narrative structure in his works, forever linked to the emo archetypes in some sort of sweet dark fashion.
Alice in Wonderland is, however, a surrealist piece rather than a fantasy, therefore lacking the easy handlers of sword adventures - even though the monster and the sword indeed appear in Through the Looking Glass (the book), as a very short-story written in a medieval way that Alice finds and reads. It's a small detail in the whole book though and I'm certain that it was never intended to dominate the whole opus, or change the surreal tone of the story.
Unable to pursue the essence of surrealism (well, he might not even tried to) Tim Burton followed the easiest rout and transformed Alice into a Joanne D'Arc involved in a fight of good versus evil. Just plain as that, so frustrating as that - yet, a formula guaranteed to please huge audiences.
In visual terms it is equally disturbing - the 3D caused me headaches, while I noticed that some major problems were happening in the movie, like the whole perspective being often distorted, colours suddenly changing and the background losing all resolution all of a sudden.
If taken just as fast entertaining this movie can still be viewed, but cannot be compared to other Tim Burton's movies. It's just sad to see that happening.